The chiming of bells had always been Hermione's favorite sound. It reminded her of her Grandmothers house in Paris. It reminded her of the happy moments of her childhood. And in the middle of a war, those were the memories she needed the most.
The war had been going on for over a year now. Every time Harry got one step closer to Voldemort, something would happen. A member of the Order would betray them, someone would get killed trying to capture Death Eaters. Voldemort would slip away yet again, leaving Harry no closer to what was expected of him.
A bell chimed in the distance, breaking Hermione out of her thoughts. A small smile crept across her face as she thought of a time when she was happy, spending summers in France with her Grandmother.
"What are you thinking about Hermione?" Ron would ask her, as he had done so many times before.
"My grandmothers house in Paris." She would tell him, probably for the hundredth time that week.
"Tell me about it." He would say.
It had been that way for months. Hermione would tell stories of her childhood, and Harry and Ron would listen intently. Ron was fascinated by the idea of growing up without magic. Harry was jealous of her growing up happy.
This particular day, when the weather was cold and rainy, she told of a sunny, warm summer day that she had spent with her grandmother. She had been 11 years old, and it was the last summer before she attending Hogwarts. It was the last summer she ever spent in France, as her grandmother had died that winter.
The chiming bells of the Notre Dame de Paris had awoken her early that morning. She knew something big was going to happen that day, she could sense it. She had been preparing for the morning meal when a light tapping noise caught her attention. She had searched the entire kitchen looking for the noise, but found nothing. She had decided to ignore it, and had gone outside to sit under her favorite tree and read until the maids announced that breakfast was ready.
As the bells once again chimed, ringing throughout the entire city, Hermione's attention was diverted away from her book by a rather large, tawny owl. At first she thought nothing of it, until she noticed it was staring back at her. Clutched in its tiny talons was an envelope. She could remember thinking how odd it was to see an owl carrying a letter.
During this particular story, Harry and Ron would always interrupt, remembering the day they each received their own Hogwarts letters.
Harry had gotten his on his 11th birthday. It had been delivered to Harry shortly past midnight, in a weathered lighthouse in the middle of a large storm. For Harry, that was the best moment of his childhood.
Ron had been nervous the entire summer after he turned 11, worried that he was not magical enough to be accepted to Hogwarts. His parents always told him that he would be accepted, but he had a hard time believing them. Especially since Fred and George liked to tease Ron about his lack of magical ability. Like Neville, he had been a late bloomer, not showing any real magical capabilities until after he was 9. The day his letter arrived, his mum cooked a large meal (larger then her typical ones) and the entire family ate and celebrated the entire night. It was the same thing they had always done when one of the children got accepted to Hogwarts. They would do the same for Ginny the next summer.
When the boys would finally stop talking, Hermione would finish her story about how she carefully approached the owl, who simply dropped the envelope at her feet and flew off without so much as a hoot. She had opened the envelope with shaking hands, reading the letter carefully.
Ron would laugh about her reaction to finding out she was a witch, and Harry would just nod in understanding, having been equally as shocked when Hagrid had said those 4 little words to him on his 11th birthday.
Once Hermione was done telling her story, they would sit in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, until something came to their attention and then the moment would be over.
Hermione lived for those moments, when it almost seemed like they weren't fighting in a war, but simply 3 friends sharing stories with each other about the pasts.
But the reality was far more cruel then that, and the chiming of the bells was Hermione's only escape from the harshness of war.