Chapter 1
The woman sighed in her plush office, decorated in an oddly gray shade of mauve. She was in her 40s, not particularly beautiful or striking but certainly not a face you'd forget. Her nose was flat, her eyes were large but not in a doe-faced sort of way, but rather as if she was closely related to a fly. Her glasses, outdated in a periwinkle color adorned with rhinestones, did not help to disguise this rather unfortunate feature, but amplified it. Her mouth was…petite to put it nicely, much to small for her abnormally large face if you didn't. There was an unsightly pile of green-tinged brown hair that could not possibly look real. One could only explain I as though she had placed a mushroom shaped cold pack on her head and fashioned her hair over it. She sat at a white wicker desk that sat in front of a large wall of posters reminiscent of the room of a 7 year old girl as each picture was framed in a shade of pink or purple and featured a baby animal. This wall featured almost every single baby mammal one could think of, except, noticeably missing, was any animal reminiscent of a feline, for this woman absolutely detested cats. She had never understood her older sister's fascination with them. They were tiny, flighty, creatures, always coughing up hair and creating foul smells. She preferred a stockier, cuddlier type of animal; say an elephant, a horse, or a dog. Then again she never really understood her sister at all. She was always fiercely jealous of Dorrie, in the words of their parents,
"Dorrie has so many wonderful friends," said her mum.
"Dorrie is loved by all her teachers," said her dad.
"Dorrie is a prefect,"
"Dorrie aced her O.W.L.S,"
"Why can't you be more like Dorrie?" her parents questioned in unison.
Dorrie this, Dorrie that, she was tired of it. She had watched for 5 years as her elder sister climbed the social ladder, with each new rung leaving her farther and farther behind in the dust. Dorrie may have been book smart and popular but Mildred, Mildred was a strategist. She was cunning; she was bright, even if her O.W.L.S or N.E.W.T.S hadn't shown it. When Dorrie refused to make room for Mildred in her life, Mildred made it for her. Even if she couldn't be known as Mildred Umbridge, she would be known as Dolores Umbridge's little sister.
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Hermione sat, furiously typing away (thanks to the help of a one Arthur Weasley, the owner and founder Wizmug, a consulting firm that was founded after the downfall of Lord Voldemort in order to create familiarity among the wizarding world with basic muggle objects, nearly 90 of homes and business were using computers, telephones, electric ovens, and various other muggle appliances) at her sleek desk, made of a rich wood and placed in front of the backdrop of a floor to ceiling window that created an illusion similar to the one in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Dressed smartly in a gray tweed knee length pencil skirt and cream-colored short sleeve button down, her caramel hair was thrown into a messy bun, the sign of a hard day's work. Despite her long hours and 365 day a year work schedule, Hermione still looked her age of 20. Just last year, she was a high ranking ministry official for the Department of International Magical Publications, a post she received almost immediately after her graduation at Hogwarts, partly because of the excellence in her studies she had achieved at Hogwarts, and partly because by the time all of the corrupt Ministry employees were removed from their positions and tried by the Wizengamot there remained only a handful of people in each department. But after only 2 years at her important post, Hermione had left her job to become the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Prophet because the paper suffered similarly to the Ministry in that nearly ¾ of the staff was gone and only the weak reporters were left. Hermione told others that her motivation for leaving the ministry was so that she could return the paper to its former glory and put a stop to the media corruption that was so prevalent in her years at Hogwarts. But that wasn't the only reason for Hermione's departure from the job that gave her so much power and satisfaction. She had truly loved her time at the Ministry, if it hadn't been for that one person. She shuddered as she thought of "her." The one woman that could drive Hermione, headstrong, courageous, brave, Gryffindor, Hermione away from the one job she truly loved. The time when "she" had begun to create the new regime had felt like fifth year all over again to Hermione. She attempted to shake the negative thoughts out of her head but her fury only made her type faster as she quickly corrected the mistakes of Pansy's article on this season's robe fashions. Normally she would leave the editing of such articles to section editors, but after her recent breakup with her boyfriend of three years, Ron Weasley; she had sought an excuse to get away from it all and dove into her work.
"PARKINSON!" Hermione barked. "Here are the changes for your article, we go to press in 20 minutes, hop to it!" Pansy flitted away and Hermione had to laugh at herself for her actions. She knew that there was a small possibility; ok a large possibility that her actions were due to Pansy's treatment of her and her friends during their years at Hogwarts. After the short chuckle that had had a positive effect on her mood, she called out to a photographer in a friendly voice, "Colin, here's the new photo layout, but this picture is too blurry. Switch it out with this one and charm this photo so that this player flies towards the spread, not away from it. We don't need our readers' eyes wondering off the page onto a copy of the Quibbler do we now?" Hermione sent the junior staffer off with a pat on the back and the wink. For the rest of the night Hermione worked feverishly until all the work was done. The last one to go home, she locked up her office and apparated to the lobby. "See ya tomorrow Frank!," she called to her favorite security guard. "Take it easy Granger," the burly man replied as Hermione walked out of the building into the autumn chill of the night air.
((AN: Sorry it's so short, I haven't quite gotten the hang of translating the length from word documents to web pages, More to come soon!))