A/N: Pure friend service from when I first started writing.
"Mamaaa!" Hugo whined. "Where Joe?"
Hermione looked under the bed and pulled out a stuffed animal rat that her mother had dressed in a lab coat. "Here he is, Hugo. Now I want you to take your nap, okay?" She kissed his forehead, turned out the light, and shut the door.
She checked her daughter Rose's room next door. Rose was at Muggle kindergarten for another two hours, so she wouldn't get mad at her mother for trying to protect her room. Hugo didn't always like to stay in his bed during naptime, so all Rose's toys were placed out of reach in case he decided to wander around. The most important one was Rose's favorite, a lemur named Deanna. Hugo had gotten hold of her while he was teething and bitten her ear off. That destroyed any possibility of Rose trusting Hugo with her things.
Hermione placed Deanna on the shelf beside a velociraptor named Kristen (Rose had an odd taste in toys).
She headed to the kitchen and noticed a letter on the table. The owl was nowhere in sight and the treat dispenser had been recently used, so it was from someone who wrote often. As she neared the table, she recognized Ginny's handwriting and hurriedly opened the letter from her beloved sister-in-law.
Hermione,
I'm going stir-crazy here. What do you say you, me, and Luna get dressed up, go out, have a nice dinner, and help Luna pick up a guy? It'll be just like old times when we were just dating the guys. We just leave the kids with Harry and Ron and watch the hot guys watching us. C'mon, you know you wanna. Owl me back what time you're coming over.
Love,
Ginny
Hermione smiled at Ginny's shamelessness. She put the letter back on the table and continued to the front room. She was not pleased with the sight of toys spread all over the floor and began picking them up.
She launched Russell the orangutan into the toy box, muttering to herself, "How can she expect me to just drop everything. Might've already had plans."
"No you wouldn't have."
"And how do you know?" Hermione retorted. Then she realized she was talking to Rose's horse Mary. She blinked and tossed the toy behind her and continued on.
"If you had plans, you would have told Ron." Hermione chucked Sean the white leopard over her shoulder.
"So?"
"Ron can't keep anything secret form Harry, who tells Ginny everything." Xochitl the cheetah found herself in the darkness of the toy box.
"That's not true!"
"Then how did Ginny know you were pregnant with Hugo a mere hour after you had told your husband?" She hated that the voice of reason came from a fluffy white cat named Tyler.
"Well, that was a big deal. I didn't really expect him to keep that a secret for long."
"But you kinda wished he had." She didn't feel like getting into that, so she threw Meagan the dragon over her shoulder.
"I have things to do tonight."
"Like what?" Nathan the turtle wasn't letting her get away with it that easily.
"I have to cook dinner for everyone."
"If Ron is watching the kids, he's just going to go to Harry's, and Rose and Hugo will have that stir-fry they love so much." She flung Molly the bunny towards the corner of the room.
"I have to make sure they get their baths and bedtime stories."
"Ron isn't completely incompetent." She pitched Caroline the unicorn in with the other toys.
"I was thinking about washing the sheets."
"If you were planning on doing that, you would either spend all day running them through that Muggle washing machine or two minutes cleaning them with magic. Either way, it won't interfere with plans for tonight." Hermione frowned at the logic coming from Miranda the arctic fox.
"What if I don't have anything to wear?"
"Please. Half your closet is full of clothes for a night out on the town." Nell the red stag would know, having spent three months prior to Christmas hidden in there.
"But I enjoy spending time with my kids."
"And there's nothing wrong with that. You just need some fun with adult friends in an adult setting." Megan the labrador flew through the air.
"But I love talking with Rose and Hugo. I learn so much about them."
"You do realize you're essentially talking to yourself right now, right?" This snarky comment came from Robert the peacock.
"So what? I am a scintillating conversationist." She picked up Genesis the tiger.
"You need to get out of here."
Hermione cast Emily the monkey into the toy chest and shut the lid. She picked up another toy horse, Lily's Katherine, and penned her response to Ginny's invitation. She then secured the toy to the letter and called her owl, Jewel. After sending her off, she called Ron's office phone that she forced him to get.
"Ron, it's Hermione. Can you make sure you're home by six? I'm going out tonight with Ginny."
