On the morning of July 4th, 1900; the orphanage was filled with Hogwarts students whom Merope had not noticed these last few days. Merope had woken up bright and early this morning, though rather nervous about the extreme publicity she was about to receive.
The early morning was now shining through her, now stained glassed, window, brining coloured light into her room.
Merope did her usual morning routine: get up, bathe, brush her hair and get dressed. She was unusually giddy this morning about becoming famous. But hey, that's the way the human mind works.
She had a large bowl of porridge and two cups of tea. She grabbed her cloak and badge, and ran out of the orphanage door before 8:30am.
At 9am sharp, Merope arrived at the Ministry of Magic & secretly tiptoed to the Historical Artefacts office, quietly went in & closed the door behind her, and let out a relieving sigh.
"Good morning Miss Gaunt, said Fudge, standing behind her, "you're a few minutes early of the planned meeting time."
Merope jumped. Fudge had almost scared Merope out of her wits.
"Oh! It's only you, Mr Fudge. You gave me quite a fright. I almost think you were someone else, sir," Merope said rather relieved.
Merope was worried that if someone saw in the wrong part of the Ministry, they would escort her out of the building. The ceremony was going to begin in half an hour. The Minister of Magic walked in five minutes later in his best black robes.
"Good morning Fudge, Good Morning Miss Gaunt," the Minister exclaimed happily, right now, he was loving that the Ministry was getting attention from the press.
"Good morning Minister," Merope replied, offering her hand to shake; he shook it lightly.
Merope, Fudge & the Minister discussed how the ceremony would go. Merope would receive the award, thank the Minister, step down, and she would NOT be making a speech. At 9:55am, they stood up, held the artefacts in their glass cases and walked down to the atrium. Merope was in-between Fudge and the Minister, mostly so she wasn't bombarded with questions by the press.
The ceremony went according to plan, Merope received her award, allowed for two minutes for photo taking, thanked the Minister, and stepped down from the podium and let the Minister make the rest of the announcements about the artefacts would be returning to their home at Hogwarts and that protective enchantments would placed on it to prevent their theft. The ceremony had ended at 12pm, after all the questions had been answered and all photographs had been taken.
Merope finally got back to the orphanage at 1pm. She changed out of her special clothes and put on an everyday dress, her hair no longer had pretty silver ribbons in them, and her pigtails became one single plait that went down her back.
Once she'd freshened up, she went to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch. It was beef stew and pasta salad. She thought the salad was delicious, but the stew was barely potable. All together, the meal was rather good on average, so she decided to ask the barman to thank the cook for such a good meal. But she didn't quite understand why the barman had blushed at her comment.
At 1:45pm, she went out to explore the alley for a few more hours as it was rather boring to sit in the orphanage for the rest of the afternoon, also the possible prospect that she would have no peace from anyone due to the fact that her name & photograph will probably be somewhere in the Daily Prophet tomorrow.
After four hours of exploring and getting used to the alley's layout, Merope returned to the orphanage just in time for dinner. There was turkey roast and chicken pies and assorted pastries. And for dessert, there was apple pie, sweet pumpkin pie and even very rich chocolate pie.
For the first time ever while she was at the orphanage, she felt as though she'd eaten too much.