When September came, they tried to pretend everything was back to normal. They spent the weeks since May making Hogwarts look "just like it had before". Never mind that those were the same walls students were attacked in. Never mind that some students would walk down the same corridors and have flashbacks to the previous year. It was important to go back to normal.
Harry used his fame to ensure all the Death Eaters were locked up before running off to a cabin the middle of nowhere with Ginny. Ron used his fame to enjoy the alcohol and women and admirers. Neither seemed interested in using their fame for change. Parents reassured their scared children that going back to school and having a regular year would fix everything. No one but Hermione wanted to change anything.
Apart from Draco Malfoy, the only marked Death Eater not in Azkaban thanks to testimonies from Harry and Hermione. The newspapers called him "brainwashed" and "misunderstood", then "cunning" and "diabolical". They didn't talk about the time or money he donated to rebuilding Hogwarts. They didn't talk about the orphanage he set up and regularly visited for those left parentless by the Death Eaters. They definitely didn't talk about the reparations he made to Harry, Hermione, Luna and the countless others who had been imprisoned in Malfoy Manor.
The newspapers did, however, mention Draco's meeting with muggleborn and friend of war heroes Hermione Granger. She herself was never called a heroine, and maybe that's why she agreed to meet Draco. Or perhaps she met him because of what he wrote her in the letter: "I wish things would change".
Regardless of her reasons, she did meet Draco Malfoy at a café in Diagon Alley, a meeting that she later thought of as a turning point. After that meeting, Hermione ignored the newspapers' scathing remarks, Mrs. Weasley's howlers, and Ron's angry letters. "He might have changed, but still be careful Hermione," is all the advice she accepted, and only because Harry prefaced the statement with "I know that you know what you're doing".
Hermione only reacted to the negative press by showing up on the arm of Draco Malfoy at the ball in May, the ball to celebrate the anniversary of the end of the war. The stories were split between "Malfoy has reformed" and "Malfoy taking advantage of muggleborn". The two were intensely private, and no one could figure out why they were together until he put the Malfoy money and connections behind her bid for Minster of Magic. Then the stories switched to "muggleborn taking advantage of Malfoy" and "social climbing muggleborn", not that Hermione was paying attention.
Hermione was a revolutionary, as anyone who knew her would say, and when she became Minster of Magic, she made sure no one would forget it.