Friday - August 4th, 2001.
The front door to Obscurus Books swung open, as it anticipated the nudge from Hermione's toe. Her arms were laden with the stationery she'd been asked to collect on behalf of the business. She didn't hesitate as she rushed for the counter, to drop the bags into place.
A bottle of ink rolled out from the bag though Penelope caught it without taking her eyes off her book.
"You could use magic to carry things, you know." She said as she turned over the bottle to examine it.
"I'm aware," Hermione snapped, breathless. It wasn't that long of a walk, and she feared she'd atrophy if she relied on magic for every little task.
"Hmm," Penelope's brow sharpened, a fine black arch over light blue eyes. She examined the goods from the bag with a cursory glance, though it was the same things each week. "Thank you."
Hermione smiled and dug through the bags until she found the bagel she'd bought that morning with Ginny. She picked through the other bag to find the muffin she'd bought, which she set beside Penelope with a decisive nod.
"It's still quiet then?"
"We opened five minutes ago," Penelope's lips quirked as she unpacked the bags with a flick of her wand. Bottles of ink flew out alongside a few ledgers and a bottle of multipurpose cleaner. "It's never busy in the mornings."
Hermione flipped the corner of the dusty carpet that she'd rolled over in her haste. The stacks were empty save for the dozens of manuscripts and bound leather books. Several cushy armchairs sat beneath a wide latticed window, with small signs pressed against the glass.
Their business surged during the holidays and just before Hogwarts resumed. Otherwise, it was quiet and most orders arrived via owl from other bookstores, in other cities and even other countries.
The quiet suited Hermione.
"Tell me if you need me, then," Hermione smiled as she vanished into the slim hallway that led to the offices.
Penelope's office was large and light as it had a large glass window that led into the main part of the store. Mandy used Penelope's office, though otherwise, she worked the front area as a sales assistant. Hermione was tucked away in the dark corner, behind a ward charm she'd established months ago. Her office was the last, smallest one. It was barely large enough for the scrappy, dated furniture.
There was a high, small small window that let in a fraction of light. She had enchanted window beside her desk with a simulated version of Muggle London. She liked the bustle and the visuals, as a way to inject visual interest in an otherwise dull room. She had debated what to make the vision outside, whether it could be a forest or Hogwarts itself, but neither appealed to her as they used to. A small, stubby cactus sat in a red terracotta pot with a harpy drawn on the side.
Her gaze skipped over the room, to her functional wooden desk to her sagging wooden shelves. She committed her office to memory each night, to make sure that no one had been in here. Paranoia mounted inside her chest each day as she surveyed it for spy devices or hidden Snatchers.
Nothing of note; nothing to see.
Except for the enchanted window and the tiny cactus that Ginny had given to her when she's first gotten the job here.
She had permission to decorate, but it was like her apartment.
Everything had become dispensable and utilitarian.
She wasn't meant to exist.
She tossed her long braid over her shoulder before she dug into her purse. Her beaded purse had been useful in the war, and remained useful to this day. She stuck her arm into the bag to her shoulder, in search of the messy manuscripts she'd taken home to copy-edit and fact check.
Some were rejected on sight, while others required her careful investigation, to ascertain who had sent it in the first place.
She pulled out three, two of which she'd already mentally rejected.
Obscurus Books acted as a store and a publisher in one. Hermione focused on assessing manuscripts and — it wasn't so bad. It wasn't her grand vision of her future, in the heart of the Ministry with magical law reforms in her eyes.
She had applied to the Ministry after she'd graduated from her Eighth year at Hogwarts. She had five glowing letters of recommendation and twelve NEWTs; eleven Outstandings and one Exceeding Expectations in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
They had rejected her outright with a form letter.
Her resentment of the Ministry mounted since then. She was glad they'd rejected her now, but it had stung at the time.
She carried two of her manuscripts across the room, to drop them into her bottomless trunk.
(It wasn't truly bottomless, but it was deeper than any normal trunk.)
One had been about the merits of blood purity in child-rearing, which she refused based on her personal bias. She hadn't read it and hadn't needed to read it. If they could be prejudiced against her, then she would return the favor with gusto.
The second manuscript had been a fictional story about a mermaid who fell in love with a troll, and it was… Graphic.
Hermione refused to represent it and refused to even send a rejection letter.
All she could think of poor Sally and that beast Goyle.
Her skin shivered with distaste.
The remaining manuscript was more complicated.
Hermione sat down in her rickety brown chair with the too-thin cushion. She drew her legs up to rest them against her desk, her hand pressed against her mouth.
So much misinformation had been published in the years since the Battle for Hogwarts. More than a dozen false biographies had been written about Harry. The number of times she had been accredited as his first kiss and his first sexual experience made her want to throw up. Ginny had been stuck between livid and jealous until she broke down in teary laughter.
Ron hadn't talked to her for a week when he'd found out about it. He lifted his brow and snorted, and made a grand fuss about how it wasn't funny. She argued that no one had said it was funny.
And they'd fought over it, too.
He shouted, she shouted, it was no different than usual.
Along with the false biographies with equally false interviews, there were 'first-hand accounts' of the Battle of Hogwarts. These presented a different sort of insult to her lingering injuries.
Each would claim to be an eye witness. They'd either be someone who wanted to exploit their position in the battlefield or they would lift a name of a student who'd fallen, to say it was an account they'd written with their dying breath.
As if no one would verify their claim.
This manuscript was different.
It wasn't dramatized, for one thing. There was nothing special about the writing, per se, nor was it well-written.
It spoke about how the battle stilled and the courtyard turned to smoke. It got the silence that covered the grounds and the students tucked behind the body of the giant.
It even listed Hermione and Ron, with their arms full of fangs.
It was completely right until it wasn't.
The smoke was so thick, I cast a bubblehead charm on myself. In the flash of the spell and the clarity of the air, I saw a Death Eater grab Harry's hand, as he lay on the ground dead. They waved their wand and Harry blew apart.
Whoever they were, they made sure Harry was dead. The bubblehead charm glimmered when a bone cracked against it.
Then they vanished, clutching… Something.
Someone.
This wasn't a long piece. It may have been intended to be added to their Hogwarts Memoriam collection, which was a bi-annual publication where they'd include student accounts from the battle. Some were about the aftermath of the war or about their time with the Carrows.
Some people had suppressed their memories through trauma or battle damage. It wasn't uncommon to receive accounts of the death of Harry and Voldemort which matched this description.
It was that detail; that a Death Eater had blown Harry up.
Her throat tightened at the thought.
It was a joke. It had to be.
She had a whole pile of rejected memoriam pieces. Some said that the giant squid came out to fight. Others said they saw Hermione giving a handjob to a Death Eater to spare her life. One piece claimed they saw Draco Malfoy at the final battle, which was another overt lie.
The Malfoys had vanished altogether the day their mansion had exploded, the same day the world 'mudblood' had been carved into her forearm. She massaged her scar through her robes, her brow set in a harsh line.
People would say the most ridiculous things to get published.
She tossed this aside, onto the pile of rejected manuscripts. Her head hurt.
…
By closing time, Hermione had made progress on two of her major projects. Not in full, but she had made a decent dent into the general structure and spelling.
The work itself was straight-forward. It was all she needed, given her focus was outside of work.
It was better than her week-long stint at Flourish and Blotts, where she'd been assaulted by a man with a stinging hex.
He'd asked her for a book from an upper shelf and he'd hexed her while her back was turned. She'd broken her wrist when she'd landed and hit her head on the way down.
Coward.
The manager had apologized to her, but she quit the next week. She didn't like the dynamic of retail anyway, and it didn't suit her to be so public. Not while people wanted her dead.
He could have killed her, if he wanted to.
Hermione collected her beaded purse and several children's novels she'd plucked from the shelves during her break. She had also grabbed several textbooks that had been donated to the store by ex-Hogwarts students. The information was still good, just not as up to date as more recent publications.
She scrawled a note and fastened it to the cover of the book.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.
Once the books were tucked into her bag, she felt her stomach drop. She wished she could get more but it would be suspicious to buy dozens of textbooks.
She didn't even know if anyone read them.
She pretended they did.
Hermione made her way to the front desk where Penelope was reviewing a manuscript. It was about constellations in relation to history, how the stars moved. Constellations were treated as absolute, however, they shifted and changed depending on many factors.
It was slim and simple but would serve as a reference for First years.
"Thank you for the textbooks," Hermione said with a pleasant smile.
"Yes, well, I took it out of your pay," Penelope said with a wave of her hand.
Hermione paused at the front counter, to scrape the sixty-five Galleons into her palm. She gave a wan smile as if Penelope were actually generous.
The reality was that Hermione made less than a thousand pounds a month, by her calculations.
Her rent was six hundred pounds; Ginny had to pay twelve hundred, twice the amount Hermione paid.
She promised to pay Ginny back once she was able to, but Ginny refused.
The Holyhead Harpies had struck a series of wins, and the salary she'd made from that had seen them through thus far. George and Ron had offered to help them pay, but Hermione refused. She didn't want anyone's help, but she couldn't get a job anywhere else.
It was too dangerous.
Further to that, she refused to leave the Wizarding world. She refused to be intimidated out of the space or to recede into the Muggle world.
She wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
It was a short walk to the Apparition zone, as established in each major magical location. It was unsafe to allow people to Apparate or Disapparate at will, though people would do it on occasion. Hermione didn't want to risk a reason for the Ministry to track her movements. Instead, she jumped from the warded zone with sigils etched into the ground to a connected location.
She stood in the dark of an alleyway for a long moment, to make sure no one followed her. Once sure that she had arrived alone and remained alone, she stepped into the summer evening. A train station sat squarely across the road, a few dozen paces away. It was a train that she could feasibly use to travel to any other location in Muggle London. She always Apparated to different stations with algorithmic randomness.
There could be no patterns.
She pried her travel card from her wallet and stuffed her robes into her purse. No one noticed the robes or the way they vanished into her purse. It was peak time for travel, so dozens of Muggles in their pressed suits and neat hair all bustled left, right, up, down.
It was a mess, and exactly what she needed.
The meeting for the Order wasn't due for another two hours. She'd need an hour to travel there and a further hour to walk aimlessly through the streets of London. Each week she did this, to lose her trail to the best of her ability. She never went straight home from work and she never Apparated there.
Their headquarters had shifted long ago from Grimmauld Place. It had been her fault, after all. She had Apparated into it with someone attached to her, she'd destroyed the secrecy with one stupid mistake.
They had tried to return there several weeks after the battle. Without Harry as the owner, the house refused them.
There was no sense in the location any longer, even if it had served as a key location for the Order. They had to let go of what had been to progress.
It was her fault they'd had to migrate from Grimmauld Place.
It was her fault for so many things.
She never Apparated if she could help it. She never went straight to her chosen location. These were a few of the rules that had piled up in her mind, as she felt the slight chill of the evening air.
It was a Friday night, so the streets were alive. It was strange to see people laugh and wonder, immune to the weight of a war that wasn't theirs. She didn't look at anyone for too long and she kept her head down.
By eight o'clock she had wound her way to the Order's new base at the lower end of Blackwall.
She arrived alongside Ginny by chance, who had dirt all over her face and a deep thread of exhaustion through her features. She was in Muggle clothes, and her face looked tight. They didn't speak, nor acknowledge one another. They kept their heads low and their faces obscured.
There was an Apparation point a few blocks away, but Hermione didn't trust herself.
Not when she came from Diagon Alley with the looming eye of the Ministry over her. They needed a reason to get her, and she refused to give them one.
Anyone could latch onto her.
Her skin prickled in the evening air.
A man in a black trench coat was across the street, his head dipped away as he smoked.
She did her best to avoid looking at him, or catching his attention. It wasn't difficult, she was unremarkable as a pedestrian. Brown hair, brown eyes, average height, perhaps a little slim. She was so painfully common, she hardly picked herself out in group photos.
Though she loved her large brown mane and fierce auburn eyes. It just took time to hone in on, to focus and appreciate.
She felt the back of her neck warm, her head dropped lower. She shot a scowl over her shoulder, though all she saw was the man in black going the opposite way, too distant to pick out a face.
Your hair color hardly suits your skin tone, she thought. You should see a different stylist.
Spite and fear caused strange thoughts to flow.
The girls stopped as they arrived at a run-down dive bar. The windows had been boarded up, which obscured the pictures of large breasted women with suggestive names. The posters had been bleached so bright in the sun that it was hard to tell if they were shirtless or not.
Hermione tapped a pattern into the nine-paned window, much like a padlock on an electronic security door.
Once the pattern finished, the panes lit up. Rather than swing open, the whole door shimmered. They walked through the seemingly solid door as if it were mist.
The bar was expanded beyond logic. All three floors now segmented and stuffed full of people and pets.
The first floor was dedicated to housing anyone on the run from the Ministry for infractions.
The entrance split, so that those who were staying here didn't have to feel like they were in the way. A wide arch led into an open bar floor with walls of mirrors that had been obscured by washing or sheets. Four lines of twelve cots extended, with curtains strung to provide privacy.
This wasn't a permanent residence, but it acted as an intermediate location until they could ferry people to their contacts in France.
The scent of life was like vinegar and skim milk. A girl with golden hair played on the floor with a piece of enchanted rope that turned into a snake, then a quill, then a toy sword. Her brother sat beside her, with the same crooked smile and blond curls, his eyes wide with wonder as his sister transfigured the rope. It was impressive, though Hermione wagered it was a toy wand that George had left in the donations box last week.
They giggled and shoved one another and Hermione's lips twitched. She unpacked several books from her bag, to set them on a nearby cot with the note she'd written at work. She never put her name on the books, but she didn't have to.
It wasn't about her.
Ginny waited for Hermione before they ascended to the second floor. All the food and potions preparation happened on this floor, as evidenced by the sickly smell of rot and roast. It was a rich, too-much sort of smell, one that made her nose wrinkle and her eyes water. As they passed by towards the final staircase, she couldn't pick anything out.
Nothing distinct, except for the deep tar-like stench of burnt iron and spice.
The Order kept their tactical areas away from those who they were protecting. The third floor was warded and was the most laborious extension of all. It had been a rickety attic with nothing but insulation and a copious amount of heroin needles when they'd moved in.
They'd cleared out the floor and added walls until it looked much as the two lower floors did. The ceiling was lower, though, and made Hermione panic if she was alone.
"Work was alright?" Ginny had her hands in her pockets. She had black jeans and a leather jacket on, with a baseball cap that kept her hair out of her face. She was taller than Hermione, with thicker limbs and a sense of mass to her.
"Much the same as ever," Hermione said, idle. "Practice was…?"
"Great," Ginny said, her smile purposeful. "Fine."
They entered the main Order meeting room, which featured a far too long table for how few key members they had left. Remus and Tonks were seated at one end. George and Molly were at the other. Both pairs had a child between them, with Ted asleep against Tonks' chest while Molly held Victoire in much the same way.
"Mione," Percy nodded once, hollowly.
"Oh, good, good, hello," Molly said, her voice shaking. Her voice often shook, as she'd been tortured last summer for information about Harry. As if she had anything further than the pieces of him that turned to ash.
It was by the good graces of her blood status that she'd survived.
"Hey mum," Ginny said as she approached, to wrap her arms around them both. Remus and Tonks nodded, but they were in the midst of a quiet discussion.
Hermione took a seat at the table. She wanted to relax, but such a thing wasn't possible here. The more people they ferried here to protect, the thinner their odds of remaining undetected became.
A photo sat on the table in front of them, a smiling family photo from their trip to Egypt. Hermione picked it up, to examine the past. It was clipped from their third year at Hogwarts, just before it. It was strange to see George with two ears.
"They're due back tonight, aren't they? For the meeting?" Ginny shucked off her coat, which she tossed at Percy.
Charlie, Fred, George, Bill, Fleur — they were all out on a mission at once. It was cruel to send so much of her family out at once. Victoire curled into Molly's chest as yawned, wide and loud, and Hermione's chest ached.
She wasn't one for maternal instincts necessarily, but the child was angelic. She'd wager it was her mother's Veela nature at work. She was cherubic and pale in contrast to the deep mustard sweater that Molly wore.
"That was what their last report said," he smiled, wooden, with the jacket tossed behind him.
"Ron here yet?" Ginny hummed, her arms crossed over her chest.
Percy strained his jaw as his gaze darted to his mother.
"Ah, he will be, I'm sure - " Ginny swallowed hard enough for it to be visible.
The Weasleys were such a broad, numerous family. They considered Harry as good as family, given how close he was to Ginny and Ron. In different ways, ways that Hermione failed to match.
Hermione got up from the table. She had been seated all day and the anxiety of a mostly empty meeting room after their allotted meeting time…
She didn't want to pace. It'd just worry Molly.
Instead, she dug her fingers into a corkboard nearby to pick at rusted tack. It had a list of names beneath it, expected routes and patrol times. None of these people were still active in the Order, whether through their sense of duty being completed, or forcibly retired.
Or they were dead, but she skipped past that thought.
She didn't come to Order meetings to lean into tragedy. She came to secure a clean defeat, rather than relax into the lull of an inactive battlefield.
"You haven't been asked to go to that evaluation thing they're doing, have you?" Molly wrapped her arms tight around her granddaughter. Victoire fussed against the pressure and Hermione had to look away.
"No."
"Do you think they will?"
Hermione's lips quirked. "They'd need to know my address for that."
The sound of heavy footfall came from just outside the room. It was enough to draw each of their wands, as shouts and growls bounced through the limited space. Snape appeared through the wide double doors, followed by Ron, who was red in the face.
"They can't have her!"