Chapter One – Leaving Home and Going Home
An obnoxious buzzing woke Hermione from a pleasant dream. She slammed a hand onto the alarm clock, crawled out of bed and into the adjacent bathroom. Looking into the mirror above the sink, she started scrutinizing her appearance. Her hair was far too messy and she had bags under her eyes. Her lips were perfectly pouty but pale in comparison to their usual happy pink; she was nervous as hell.
"Get a grip, woman," she started talking to herself. "It's only been fifteen years; things can't be that different there."
She suddenly felt very old. Had it really been fifteen years since she had seen any of her Hogwarts friends? She shrugged it off; she didn't feel that old, and she certainly didn't look that old. In truth, she hadn't changed much since her school days. Her hair was completely wild this morning, like always, but she took more time getting prepared for the day than she did back then. Now, most people would see her with cascading brown curls, rather than the bushy mess it was naturally. Her eyes were still young in appearance. The light and laughter they had held in her past hadn't left them yet, but they were framed by worry lines. Having barely any interaction from people, besides her parents, in the last fifteen years had made her feel lonely and stressed; part of the reason she was so anxious about this new job.
Hermione was going back to Hogwarts, not as a student, but as a Professor. She would be taking over for Professor McGonagall who would be dropping her Transfiguration classes to wear the mantel of full time Headmistress. She couldn't help wondering whose kids she would be teaching, and if she'd run into any old classmates.
She turned away from the mirror and pulled off the long t-shirt she had slept in. 'Time for a hot, relaxing shower,' she thought to herself. She stepped into the shower and let the steaming water wash her nerves away.
Twenty minutes later, she climbed out of the shower, smelling pleasantly of lilacs, and her nerves came thundering back. She stood there, dripping onto the bathroom floor, slightly ashamed that she would be so nervous. Shivering slightly in the cool air, she grabbed a fluffy blue towel from the linen closet, and wrapping it around herself, made her way back to her bedroom to dress. Hermione opened her dresser drawer only to remember that she packed all of her clothes in her trunk the previous evening. Rolling her eyes at herself, she went to her trunk and grabbed the deep purple robes she had already planned on wearing. After applying a light layer of makeup, she headed to the kitchen for breakfast.
"This is the part I'll miss the most," she said to herself. Hermione loved her kitchen. All the cupboards and woodwork was a mahogany brown. It created a very warm atmosphere that she never had the chance to share with guests. A small mew from the corner of the kitchen told her she woke up her baby. She walked around the small island in the middle of the floor and picked up what appeared to be a very large Technicolor cotton ball with four legs. Crookshanks had long ago passed away, leaving Hermione devastated, but about four months ago she had fallen in love with this little Turkish Van kitten.
"Hello there, Heidi," she said to the kitten. Heidi did a few circles around Hermione's legs and then disappeared into the living room. "Goodbye, Heidi," she said with a laugh.
Hermione started making her breakfast the magical way; waving her wand to and fro to make her eggs and toast. It was far easier this way than to risk breaking a yolk doing it the muggle way. Once the food was prepared she sat at her small kitchen table, but found herself far too queasy to eat. She sighed and glanced at the clock on the wall above the sink.
"9:34, well…I guess getting there early wouldn't be a terrible thing," she said to herself. She realized that she was starting to talk to herself too often, and made a mental note to attempt to quash the habit.
With a flick of her wand, the uneaten food was magicked away, leaving her plate sparkling. She placed it back into the cupboard and looked around her kitchen.
"I'll be back again next summer," she sighed, and then kicked herself for saying it out loud.
She went back to her bedroom and locomotored her trunk behind her into the living room, where a large fireplace stood waiting for her. She placed her trunk by the fireplace and went in search of Heidi. After finding her wallowing in the shower stall, she threw open her trunk and gently set the kitten inside. She reached up onto the mantel piece for an ornamental vase, withdrawing from inside it a handful of floo powder. She grasped her trunk and backed into her fire place. Hermione threw the powder at her feet and was instantly swallowed by bright green flames.
"Platform 9 ¾!" she spoke clearly, and then was whisked away from her home for the past ten years, and into the train station she knew so well.
She stumbled out of the fireplace and looked at her surroundings. Steam was billowing around the scarlet steam engine. The memories that flooded the scene almost overwhelmed her. She recalled her first acquaintance from the magical world, Neville Longbottom. Neville's toad, Trevor, had gotten lost and they searched the train to find it. If it wasn't for the faithful toad, Hermione never would have met her two best friends for the next seven years, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. Although she hadn't contacted anyone from school in fifteen years, Harry and Ron were still very close to her heart. They had been through so much together; the sorcerer's stone, the basilisk and the chamber of secrets, helping Harry's godfather, Sirius Black escape from the wrath of the ministry on the back of a condemned hippogriff, the Triwizard Tournament, the rebirth of Lord Voldemort, the search for the Horcruxes that permitted Voldemort's immortality, and the raging battle that spelled the end for the horrible dark wizard.
She sighed. It had been so long ago… could she really handle going back there?