Hey guys,
This is dedicated to my friend Elena who kick-started my train of inspiration!
It's literally just how it sounds in the description. Hope you enjoy it!
She sat down with a contented flop onto the garden chair, placing her shoulder bag down on the ground next to her.
Hermione was exhausted; after a long day of working at the ministry and seeing very few results, she had reached the end of her tether. Even though she did work at the ministry, it wasn't paid, and had barely any influence; it was a small internship in the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Despite her work in the war and her brief stint with the famous life after it finished, she still had to work hard to make her way up the ministry ladder. Not that this was a problem, it was the way she had always done things, so she just continued as she always did. But this did lead to many exhausted afternoons. She rested her aching shoulders as she slumped into her seat and leaned her head back against the wall behind her.
Hermione was sitting in the back garden of a quaint, little cafe in London. It was currently well into autumn and everywhere around her there were browning leaves on the tree branches and covering the floor with colour. From where she sat, she could see a number of other tables, all with mismatching chairs, arranged together in pairs or threes around a tree which stood in the centre of the small area. From the tree, pieces of fabric were hung to the surrounding walls, giving the garden a homely feel even from the first time someone saw it. On the surrounding walls, various quotes had been written out on numerous pieces of paper, though over time most of the words had began to peel or fall from their positions so that Hermione could no longer recognise more than just a few phrases. But despite their neglected appearance, she felt that this made the cafe all the more endearing, somehow.
She couldn't help the appreciative smile that grew on her face as she looked around the familiar setting.
This cafe was one which Hermione was very familiar with. She had stumbled upon it a few years ago on one of her (far too infrequent) trips into muggle London. And since finishing Hogwarts, she had taken up the habit of coming here every other day to read or write. There were many muggle students who would come each day and do the same thing; order a coffee and sit through the day writing various papers on their laptops.
Hermione felt a certain kinship with them, sitting among the group of students as if she had studied right alongside them. But there was still a barrier she felt she could never overcome separating her from them. When she had first entered the Wizarding world she had felt so out of place amongst this new group of people. Though she shared this magically ability, the culture that surrounded them was so different to her upbringing that she couldn't see herself fitting in. But now as she had been sitting with these students she realised just how alien the muggle world had grown to be. What had once been so familiar in the face of the new was now no longer as much of a part of her as she had once thought.
She couldn't help be conscious of that as she sat among the muggle students. Though, ever the stubborn woman that she was, she decided to ignore that completely and continue her usual visits as if she was no different to anyone else.
Today, however, the cafe was fairly empty. There had been a few students in the main room of the cafe, as there usually was, but stepping out into the back garden, she was met with none of the usual faces; only empty seats. Not that this bothered her at all, she sometimes liked the quiet, it allowed her to regain her strength in her solace.
She sighed, opening her eyes after having let them close for a moment, and looked up once more at the space around her.
Everything was as it usually was. The mismatched chairs sat in their usual positions; the small pots full of salt and sugar sat in the centre of each table waiting for the next customers; and the familiar cream fabric still hung over the whole scene.
The only thing Hermione saw which was different was a book. It sat on a nearby table and she wondered why she didn't notice it earlier as she had walked to her chair. It looked very new, like it was just out of print, without even a single crease in the spine – Hermione couldn't help thinking that the owner couldn't have been excited about it if they forgot it in a cafe after never even opening it in the first place. Still, the bookworm in her had become curious, so leaving her bags by her chair she got up and moved towards it.
It was a hardback book, the kind which reminded Hermione of large bookshelves, old libraries and second hand bookshops. The front and back covers were covered in a rough fabric of matted red, devoid of any writing at all, making it look remarkably plain. This however, was not at all true of the spine. The red of the fabric was covered completely by a multitude of intricate patterns. There was gold threading, which began at each corner of the spine, with its pattern dancing across the fabric in complicated image of swirls and shapes; twisting with other silvers, greens and a rich dark blue.
Hermione thought the casing of the book was beautiful, so upon arriving at the table, she reached out and picked it up, appreciating the artwork as she twisted it in her hands.
Having no idea which cover was the front, due to the lack of any writing on either side, Hermione chose one cover at random, opening it up to reveal the text beyond. She was instantly greeted by a page of text which began at the top and ended half way down the page.
Some words near the end caught her eye, and despite her usual aversion to spoiling an ending, she read it.
– had grown wrinkled, as time had aged them both. Still she knew it had been a life well lived; one of adventure and friendship, of love and loyalty, of hope, faith and trust. And in the end as she closed her eyes for the final time, she knew that even through all she had suffered, she had lived a life; not one of mediocre standards, but an epic tale - a story well written.
She hummed in consideration, before turning to the beginning of the book and opening the first page. The paper, as it was at the back of the book, was a pleasant cream colour and Hermione's eyes were instantly drawn to the title, The Art of Adventurous Living, which was written alone on the page. She flicked to the next page, absently noticing the lack of both an author's note and a dedication, and began to read the first chapter.
It all started on an ordinary Wednesday. Ordinary in the fact that, for most, it was neither a memorable day nor a holiday. This Wednesday was simply one of the four Wednesdays in September. Rumours have it that the nineteenth of September was the beginning of a long chain of celebrity scandals, but for most this day passed much the same as any of the others.
Its inconsequentiality was not felt by all, however. For one set of parents, it was the climax of all they had said, done and felt for the past 9 months. After their long wait and everything that came with it, their daughter was finally born.
The mother, at that time, had been taking a break from her work as dentist in order to retain her strength and prepare herself for the child's arrival. But despite these expectations from all those around her, she took it upon herself to keep herself busy rather than listen to the advice of others and remain in her home feeling restless. It was this rebellious streak that kept her far from where she needed to be when the time came for her child. She, upon beginning her maternity leave, had become determined to learn a new skill. With a flick of her eyes to a pot which sat on her mantelpiece, she decided right there that she would learn to create pottery.
This, of course, became more difficult as her pregnancy developed, but in spite of this, every other day she would take a cab across the city to the house of a friendly potter to learn all that she could.
This was where she was when her water broke and she went into labour; half a city away from the hospital which had been expecting them.
As opposed to the mother, the new child's father was more of the sensible sort. He had just as much of a head on his shoulders as his wife, but he preferred to keep his knowledge to his books rather than travel the world in search of everything unknown; this was more of his wife's frame of mind.
He had first trained, then worked as a dentist his whole life, and had become very comfortable in that position. In his spare time he stayed in his library, loving the immersion the environment provided and the knowledge one could gain from the search. He inspired to know rather than discover, and in this he was perfectly content.
He was given a few weeks off work around the time of the pregnancy, so on the nineteenth of September, rather than working, he had been shopping. He was finishing up on stocking the room, which would become the child's bedroom, with everything it needed. He had been out of the house for a number of hours, which had given his wife the chance to travel this city to follow her current passion.
However, despite the troubles in locating each other and travelling to the same hospital before the whole procedure started, the baby was still born; a young girl of seven pounds and a faint smattering of dark hair.
Despite the differences in their preferred lifestyles and ways of tackling life's challenges, both parents had come to agreement on their child's name.
And so, on that day, young Hermione Jean Granger was born.
Whatever Hermione had been expecting, it wasn't that.
She got a nervous wiggling in the pit of her stomach, easily remembering tom riddles diary. She initially had felt a moment of intrigue, but the weariness the war had taught her kicked in just as quickly. When magic was involved you could never be too cautious, and while the war had finished by now, she couldn't help but sit up straighter as nerves slipped into her thoughts, the adrenalin already kicking in.
She eagerly flipped a few pages to continue reading, only sticking on one page for a few lines before moving forward. She caught glimpses of her childhood; the time she broke her leg when she was eleven, when she read her first book in her father's library and when she almost sat on a candle when she was 6.
At each anecdote she read her nerves wound even more tightly. She absently noticed the pages moving quickly as her hands shook, but she couldn't take her eyes off the pages. There were lines upon lines, paragraphs upon paragraphs, depicting her whole life in more detail than she could even remember it. She briefly considered the safety of herself and her family, how this could possibly have been left in this cafe for her to see, and how so much information could fit in a book of such an ordinary size, but each revelation of what this meant stopped her from focusing on each of these concerns individually.
Quickly, as if her life depended on it, she flicked through the book until it reached her current age; slowing as she approached the current day, then started reading once more.
"That loathsome, irritating, flee-ridden, insolent-" She muttered as she ruffled the papers in front of her, trying to organise them into a neat stack.
"What's that you're mumbling, Granger?" came the derisive snarl of her boss who had just approached her desk and sat down on the chair beside it.
Mr Coughstein. A rather unimportant man in the general scheme of things, but currently one who ran his own department in the ministry and acted as if he lived to irritate his colleagues, at least that was what Hermione thought. She detested him for it.
"Are you complaining about your position here? You think you can do better in a higher spot? Tell me you could do better than me, I dare you".
It took everything she had for Hermione to stop herself from raising to the bait. She watched as he lifted his feet and rested them atop her desk, the mud from his boots smudging on some parchment which she had just finished writing on.
"I was just lost in thought, Sir" She said calmly, lying through her teeth. "I was merely thinking about someone I spoke to a few nights ago, I meant no disrespect." She bit her tongue to prevent herself saying any more, faux-polite or not.
"Let's hope not" He said as he rearranged his feet, dislodging yet another clump of mud which proceeded to fall onto her, now soiled, piece of writing. "The ministry is for official business, if you have a problem with how I run this division perhaps you should take yourself and your complaints elsewhere."
She gripped the edge of her seat in an effort to keep her composure. "No problems, Sir"
"Good, I'm glad to hear that, and you better have that report ready on that stupid Elf case, I just need some paper to file so I can get the bloody thing out of my hair. I'm sick of these useless cases."
Hermione looked at the now dirty pages which she had spent hours writing.
Incident report: The abuse and murder of Kalpie – house elf of Mr Trevors and Ms Southerly.
Most of the writing now had muck obscuring the words, but she refused to let him see he had affected her or her work, so she kept her complaints to herself.
"Yes, Sir".
Hermione almost growled low in her throat as she remembered her boss. But she refused to let herself get distracted, and kept flicking until she got to a few hours later.
She sank into her chair, admiring the now familiar walls of the cafe garden which surrounded her. All was as it usually was, except for one book which sat alone on a nearby table...
She turned the book in her hands before opening it...
Hastily, with shaky hands, she read. Each new sentence making the worry more concrete, her nerves evolving into panic...
'This is now' Hermione thought. She vaguely noticed that she had sat down on a nearby chair, leaving her bag and books carelessly on the other side of the garden, but it didn't matter. Her heart was beating irregularly in her chest, so loudly, in fact, that she could hear it in her ears. She started to feel a little claustrophobic in her skin, her torso hanging weirdly from her shoulders.
"Okay" She said to herself, "Calm down, you've got to check it, see if it's right, no need to freak out unless you fully understand what it is you're seeing."
She read forwards a few lines, hanging on each and every word.
Hermione was disrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from inside the main building of the cafe, and as she looked up she saw a small girl with short blond hair entering the garden.
"Are you okay?" The girl said as she saw Hermione, her brown eyes widening in surprise. "You look like you've seen a ghost".
"Oh" Hermione said, coughing as she tried to regain her composure, "No, I'm fine"
Hermione looked up towards the door expectantly, the hallway standing resolutely empty. She tapped her fingers nervously on the pages, ignoring the way they began to crinkle under her fidgeting. A minute passed, and nothing changed, the only sounds being those of the wind blowing through the trees and the birds which sat on their branches.
She finally looked away, back at the last few pages of the book, checking for any mistakes. 'The book may not be perfect', she thought, 'If this girl doesn't appear, there must be other mistakes too'.
She read and reread, flicking through the endless pages of what she was beginning to see as her autobiography. A surprising smile grew on her face as she stumbled on the account of her first visit to Diagon alley. Her excitement at seeing magic used freely all around her written clearly on the pages. The book spoke about Harry, about their meeting on the train, and how proud she was to have been able to complete her first spell in front of another student. Her nervousness and loneliness during the first few weeks, and the terror of seeing the mountain troll. About the happiness she felt when Harry and Ron began to include her in their lives. All the emotions felt so real, as if she experienced them all again as she read.
The sounds of footfalls dragged her out of the immersion and her nervousness, which had previously faded, came back in full force. Hermione looked up to see one of the girls who often came here to study, her laptop under her arm and her usual backpack hanging behind her. Her large eyes blinked at Hermione in shock, her curly blond her falling around her face.
Hermione almost cried as the foretold words of concern fell out the girl's mouth, "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost".
'If only it was just a ghost', she thought, 'I'm used to those'.
"Oh" She said instead. "No, I'm fine"
"Okay" The other girl, who Hermione thought was called Olive, said."You sure?"
She clearly didn't seem to believe her.
Hermione laughed, trying to diffuse the tension in her ribs, though it sounded remarkably lacking in humour. "Yeah, sorry, I was just stuck in my thoughts for a moment."
The muggle girl nodded in understanding, but smiled reassuringly anyway before sitting down at a nearby table.
'Okay' Hermione thought as she closed the book in her hands, 'I need to figure this out'. She got up, quickly packed her bag and left.
I have so many ideas, so let me know if you want me to continue with it!
For those of you who are interested, this cafe is based on one in Florence that I love to pieces, it's called SitnBreakfast and is just a few minutes' walk from San Lorenzo, it's so cute – recommended.
