08AM 12 GRIMMAULD PLACE
Hermione sniffed at the bubbling contents in an unidentified and unlabeled solution sitting precariously alongside what she guessed to be tomato soup. Or an intensified shield and improved sight potion. She stood over the steaming heat of both with and empty bowl in her hand. Biting her lip she decided that it wasn't worth the risk – in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, it was just as likely to be a fresh batch of disillusionment potion as it was to be the evening's dinner. In its half-finished state, there was no way for even the 'brightest witch of her age' to distinguish its trademark 'sawdust' smell.
Perusing the large but cluttered and cramped kitchen, she uncovered a re-wrapped bag of dried cranberries and upon submitting those to the necessary Granger-sniff deemed them edible. Back at the small table which juttered into the first quarter of the kitchen she nursed her hands on the hot sides of this morning's coffee, and tried to resist the dull ache of an oncoming headache.Hermione Granger had expected herself to feel overjoyed, exuberant, and light-as-a-feather after Voldemorts reign had come to an end, but the normally fore-sighted girl had innocently not realised the true implications of the battle between good and evil, in her dreams during the tented nights with Harry and Ron she never really saw any of her friends dying, never really saw that the uncaught death-eaters would continue to resist after their master had been quelled. Back then, Hermione Grangers mind has still been too innocent to realise all the raping and murdering would continue, that six months after He was gone that she'd still be going to funerals of witches and wizards that had been 'too young to die'. That people still were disappearing, and children being imperiused to kill their own parents. The occurrences were fewer than what it was towards the build up of the final confrontation, and herself and the Order were working hard to hunt the evil bastards down, but on this particular windy morning, she'd forgotten not to think of the dead, of the missed, and the missing, and her forgotten coffee splashed slightly when a solitary tear fell into it. She only allowed herself one, and then left to change for the day.