A/N: Since I'm extra nice and decided to give you two chapters today, since they are both pretty short.
The next two weeks until Harry's birthday passed without major incident.
Mrs Weasley still hated Hermione for doing everything with magic and leading everyone else to do the same against her demands, and Hermione still wished she was at home with her parents so she could be visiting Harry, and none of them were told anything actually going on by any of the adults. The twins had introduced their latest product, extendable ears for listening in to covert conversations from a distance, but even with those they still hadn't really learned anything important about what the Order was actually doing that couldn't have just been guessed from conversations they were allowed to hear.
Hermione continued to send letters to Harry every few days, just so he would get mail even if she couldn't really tell him anything, and there wasn't anything to tell him anyway.
But while she couldn't say much, she did continue to keep him abreast about the Daily Prophet's libeling of him and Dumbledore, by pointing out the articles such libel was contained in, as no adult could complain about her asking in her letters if he'd read the article on page such and such about this or that, as the Daily Prophet was public knowledge and written by the second enemy anyway, not anyone in the Order, so it obviously couldn't include any secret messages by the Order for any enemies to intercept and decode. And as none of the adults approving her letters could remember the specific article off the top of their heads as they read the letter she was trying to send, they didn't think that the articles would have been anything other than an article on Quidditch or something that Hermione would think Harry would find interesting.
Additionally, she always tried to mention at least one new thing about Tonks in each of her letters, so Harry would know her fairly well already by the time he got there, even without ever having met her before. And just so he would know nothing new or exciting had happened since her last letter, she would write something along the lines of 'Still busy doing the same things', or 'Making good progress with the busywork'.
As for Harry's return letters to her, he didn't have much new to say either, as nothing ever happened on Privet Drive.
Not that much was happening at Grimmauld Place that she didn't couldn't or didn't feel pertinent to tell him, either, but there were a few things going on. For one, she and Tonks were picking out some of the less dangerous artifacts they were discovering throughout the house as they cleaned it up to give to the twins to experiment with for their joke shop Harry had caused to be officially founded with his thousand galleon start-up investment that he'd given them. Hermione knew she could never write anything about that in any of her letters, as history had proven that their mum did not approve in the least and would confiscate not only their creatively and ingeniously invented products, but probably Harry's money to them as well if she ever found out about any of it, and Hermione and Tonks' involvement in the new company by funneling them potentially useful things they found in the house.
Additionally, Hermione made sure to make time to get to know Tonks better, usually either in the library at night after supper when Mrs Weasley finally let them off work, or in one of their side by side rooms when they were all supposed to be asleep in bed. And Tonks wanted to hear everything Hermione would tell her about Harry and their first four years at school, especially all the trouble they had gotten into and Harry's experiences in the triwizard tournament the year before, having been something of a concierge of trouble herself during her seven years at Hogwarts.
As for the actual cleaning of the house itself, they petrified a bunch of doxys in the drawing room and saucer-sized spiders in the dining room, storing them in separate boxes for Tonks to drop off for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, except for a few doxys and their eggs that made it into the twins' hands for the joke shop, as did a box of wartcap powder from the drawing room.
Thanks to Hermione's dedication to knowledge, Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy made it safely into the library where it belonged for the preservation of history, as did a number of ancient seals, Sirius's grandfather's Order of Merlin: First Class, Sirius's father's large golden ring bearing the Black crest, the china from the dining room bearing the Black crest and motto, and a set of old photographs of the Black family in tarnished silver frames.
A heavy gold locket with an ornate letter S inlaid with many small green stones on its front went into Tonks's box with all the other dangerous artifacts they found to take to the aurors office, since everyone who got near it got a sinister feeling about it and they couldn't open it, so they figured it must be cursed in some way, and wanted it checked out by professionals and de-cursed if possible before they moved it to the library with the rest of the Black artifacts of historical value and family significance.
A boggart was expelled from the writing desk in the drawing room by Sirius, Tonks, Lupin, Hermione and the twins, as Sirius, Lupin and Tonks all figured that between the six of them — one auror, four of age wizards, and the brightest witch in generations — that if it turned out to be something other than the boggart they were all pretty sure it was, they would still be able to take care of it together. But it did turn out to just a boggart, and they had it gone in no time.
The grandfather clock on the third floor hallway that liked to shoot heavy bolts at passersby actually took them most of an afternoon to fix even with magic, as the clock itself was imbued with magic and curses, and couldn't just be cleaned up and called good or thrown in a box to be taken to the aurors office most of the other stuff they had to deal with. But the ancient set of purple robes in one of the upper bedrooms were just straight-up set ablaze by Tonks after they had tried to strangle her and she'd had to be rescued by Hermione who was working with her. Tonks might have been with Hermione on preserving as much of the history of the house and the Black family heritage as reasonably possible, but they were just robes, and she wasn't very happy with them for trying to strangle her, so their state of being Black family robes wasn't able to save them from Tonks' wrath.
~HP~
Meanwhile, across the country on Privet Drive, Harry's birthday finally arrived.
It was ignored like always by his relatives, but Hermione and the twins had each sent him a box of Honeydukes chocolates, which Hermione had hid another long letter in, telling him about some of the more interesting obstacles they had encountered while cleaning the house, and what little new information she had gleaned about Voldemort and the Order since the last time she'd been able to send him an unredacted letter. Not that she actually had much to say on that front, but she correctly figured Harry would rather hear the nothing new they'd learned than hear nothing at all. She also assured him that she'd continuously been asking every adult she could when he was going to finally be brought there, but no one would ever give her any answer other than 'soon' or some derivative of such, so that was all she could give him, too.
But it was still something for Harry, and he greatly appreciated the effort Hermione was making to try to keep him abreast of what was going on as best she could, and all in all, it was one of the better birthdays he'd ever had.