"And I use mouthwash
Sometimes I floss
I got a family
And I drink cups of tea
I've got nostalgic pavements
I've got familiar faces
I've got a mixed-up memory
And I've got favourite places"
"Mouthwash" – Kate Nash
Something rough and scratchy was dragging itself along the back of Hermione's hand.
She withdrew the appendage back under the safety of the duvet, twisting her hips and torso to corkscrew her way back under cover. If she lifted the edge of the blanket just enough, offensively bright streamers of light made their way underneath. Momentarily blinded, the blankets let out a great "HARRUMPH" and the body underneath tossed to the other side in a fit of annoyance.
She felt a gentle weight creep up the side of the mattress and settle, vibrating, on her abdomen. Carefully, one arm snaked out from beneath the covers to greet the cat-kneazle who was impatiently thumping his tail against her ribs. She twined her fingers in the long ginger fur and stroked his back and head gently. "Hey there, Crooks."
Crookshanks swiped at her hand with his claws lightly extended, leaving a single angry red mark on her wrist. He hadn't drawn blood, but with his displeasure he had garnered the full attention of his mistress. Her torso heaved from the bed and she scooped him up before tossing him gently down onto a pillow on the floor. From behind her rat's nest of hair only one of her eyes peeked out.
"That's enough! When have I ever forgotten to feed you?"
Crookshanks canted his head to the side and let out a communicative mewl.
"Petulant thing," Hermione murmured, as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Crookshanks stomped his foot and thumped his tail imperiously at her. "I'm up!"
She crouched down to the sun strewn floor, turning over piles of clothes and yesterday's jeans to fish out a pair of fluffy knit socks. Feet protected; Hermione slid into the bathroom on the hardwood. Even Crookshanks knew that breakfast came second to dental hygiene.
Hermione counted in her head as she brushed, pulling aside one cheek and then the other with her index finger so she could reach her molars.
After she spat and rinsed, she set about flossing while Crookshanks observed her from the hallway.
Face scrubbed and red and her morning business complete, she emerged and padded out to the kitchen.
Crookshanks was pacing behind her heels, his tail swiping at her calves to hurry her along in her morning responsibilities.
"If I'd known you liked meat this much I would have taken to buying it for you years ago." Hermione had withdrawn a brown paper packet from the refrigerator. Her finger edged along under the sticker and she pulled at the twine impatiently, urged on by Crookshanks' encouraging hiss.
Flipping the rump steak onto a pine cutting board, she made short work of slicing it with a chef knife. No sooner had the raw fleshy cubes hit Crookshanks' bowl than he was on them. The tom chomped and smacked his pleasure loudly, and his aloft tail signaled his gratitude.
Hermione had never seen a cat tuck into a bowl of raw meat before Crookshanks, but it was evidently not out of the ordinary for a kneazle to refuse kibble or cooked foods. In his advancing age, Crookshanks had become, if possible, more ornery and hard to please.
It was only since she had brought him home from Adelaide that he had refused to be fed anything but steak. Hermione suspected that while Crookshanks had ruled the roost at her parents' home he had managed to manipulate her mother and father into providing anything the fat orange tomcat wanted. In a curious way, their affections for their daughter, while forgotten, seemed to manifest themselves in an obsessive regard for Crookshanks. They had treated him as if he were their only child.
For herself she selected a plastic cup of berry yogurt, which she consumed while her tea steeped in a plain black thermos. Hermione preferred a strong cuppa: she would often let the tea sit until the oils had visibly manifested on the surface of the beverage. By the time she would let herself take a sip it was often so astringent as to make most people wince in displeasure. Usually, this would be the only caffeine she would manage to consume until midday or later—it was a cup of tea with its work cut out for it.
Carefully, the witch gathered her belongings—setting aside a crocheted market bag with a sewn body-insert (which she had made bigger and easier to carry with an undetectable expansion charm and lightening charm) alongside her purple beaded bag which she had kept from the War. These days, while it still contained camping equipment and the furious portrait of one of the Black family patriarchs, it also was now home to her wand, her muggle paperwork and identification, a leather folio for her work documents, and her wallet. Satisfied that she had gathered what she needed, the small witch made her way back to the bedroom.
She dressed for the day in a pair of jeans, rolling the cuffs until they accommodated the short length of her legs. Socks and a pair of pristine white sneakers (she had spelled them with an impervious charm, one of the few vanities she was willing to indulge) followed. Finally, she wrestled a too-large, pink mohair sweater over her hair, taking care to roll up the sleeves to her elbows. Standing, she buttoned the fly of her jeans over her navel, slipping the hem of the sweater underneath the waistband in a French-style tuck.
The clothes looked as if they belonged to a woman five inches taller and two stone heavier. For twenty-six she was rather diminutive. It was something she had had to accept about herself. Particularly as she had entered University and later had moved to London. Without her reputation, without her magic or her history: she was just a quiet, studious, very short young woman whom very few people took seriously.
The door clicked softly behind her, the lock engaging. Hermione deftly traced her wand over the handle, causing the metal to glow like a soft sunset before fading again. Most of the danger of the war had passed. Eight years had done the wizarding world in Great Britain some good, Hermione had to admit.
Her feet carried her down the stairs of her walk-up and through the front door. She would need to travel some six blocks north-east before backtracking past her apartment to get to Waldweirness. It would be tight, but she didn't doubt that she would make it with time to spare. She did most days, and those who depended on her were the understanding sort. Life had a way of intruding on all her best laid plans: accordingly, Hermione concluded that adaptability would need to be one of her guiding principles going forward. Sometimes, one was simply late.
It was a boring walk, and not a very picturesque one. Her mind drifted.
She didn't regret leaving Adelaide. Muggle University life was fun, she had made some friends amongst her Australian peers, and she had been passionate about her major. She had arrived shortly after the war, in a sort of fugue to call forth her parents' memories once more. It had been far less difficult than she had imagined, and yet the real trouble began only after.
In the time they had been living in Australia, the aging, (newly) childfree Wilkins had been greatly perplexed as to why, instead of pursuing their certifications for orthodontistry as they had planned some eighteen years ago, they were still dentists—and worse yet, they had no practice. What on earth had happened in the eighteen interceding years to blunt their ambition in such a way?
They went back to school during the war. By the time Hermione had contacted them, the Doctors Wilkins were well on their way to their new certifications. Upon recalling their daughter and their true identities, they were resolute in their desire to continue their education.
Hermione, worn from the war, sick to her heart, and missing her parents dearly, forged her A-levels and applied to a University. While she did travel back every so often to meet with Harry and Ron, to attend their weddings and to christen their children, she lived for six years in Adelaide. Her parents finished their certification and opened a practice in the city—and so it went until 2004.
It shouldn't have surprised her, that her parents would want to get back to their own lives in England at some point, but perhaps the fact that they had committed so many resources and so much time to their practice in Adelaide had inured her against belief that they would wish to return. Incredibly, they closed their Australian premises and opened Granger Orthodontics in London, a stone's throw from their old neighborhood, in which they had bought a house in the same row as their old home.
They were jubilant that they had done so, but something about the attachment struck Hermione as inescapably sad. Perhaps it was her guilt, she reflected. They lost that house they missed because she had thrown them out. But too, they were aging and in that they only wished for the soothing nature of familiar surroundings. Hermione had robbed them of that as well. Now they would pass their old home every day, perhaps even befriending the new inhabitants, without being able to live in it themselves.
The doors in front of her slid open of their own accord, and the witch stooped to grab a plastic basket before treading squeakily around the perimeter of the Aldi. She found little to take from the produce, though she did pick up two loaves of bread. She took a meandering path through the ill-lit aisles, stopping at the stacked boxes of biscuits. Here she filled half the basket, sighing with displeasure as she did so.
She only checked the list she had stashed in her folio once—it was almost always the same. Tea next. Coffee too. Tinned fish, cheese, several boxes of crackers, frozen pudding packages and instant roast dinners. She would have to cast a discreet freezing charm on the final items, and then she would carefully secure the items in the enlarged crocheted bag, and head further up the block to the Asda, which was where she could purchase sliced liverwurst from the deli, as well as a pound and a half of blood sausage.
Hermione no longer told her parents how her days went. They most often stared at her intensely, barely concealing their concern and indignation over the fact that a daily part of her duties was simple grocery shopping, and clearly wanting to indicate that they felt the rest of her job was below her as well. She lived on her own in London because of the massive rows about it. They hadn't questioned her degree work because they were so thrilled that she had decided to attend muggle University: yet when, in 2004, she had returned to London with them, Hermione sought out a low-level Ministry job with her qualifications instead of pursuing further research.
The department was as shunted aside as it was possible to be. It had hardly suffered under Pius Thicknesse or Voldemort because with all likelihood they had simply not known of its existence. It operated on a shoestring budget and was housed outside of the rest of the ministry, in an adjunct office located in Waldweirness-on-Thames.
The first time Hermione had gone to visit her new office, and the surrounding area, she had been stunned. Apparently, not only Muggles saw the dilapidated exterior. The glamour, or perhaps it wasn't even a glamour, applied for wizards and witches as well: and yet, upon entering the building that she was told was home to her new office, she had found the interior as polished and sparkling as the Ministry's atrium, if a bit less ostentatious.
Unfortunately, she couldn't show her parents the nice accommodations her office afforded her. All they knew was that she was prowling about Waldweirness-on-Thames, a famously derelict neighborhood filled with strange people (whom, in fairness, they now understood to be wizard-kind), yet their concern over their daughter mounted.
She paid the cashier at Asda with money she counted out from an envelope in her folio, carefully recording the totals and affixing the receipt with a subtle wandless sticking charm. She had picked up a few more sleeves of biscuits, these ones name brand, for those who would be in a strop if she didn't bring their exact preferred brand, and sickeningly, five boxes of lime gelatin, which Hermione desperately hoped she would not see offered to her in the future in the form of some moulded monstrosity stuffed with fruit or veg. The fresher food she generally bought from the wizarding farmers who came in from the country on Wednesdays and Sundays. After all, where else was she to buy pumpkins as big as Hagrid's in London? Or Mooncalf milk? Chicken eggs were well and good, but it had been put to her that they simply couldn't replace doxy eggs on some mornings.
It had been news to her that anyone ate doxy eggs, yet she could only make her best effort to accommodate the request.
It was only muggle junk food and preserved food which she had to pick up from the supermarket. When she had started, she had found it odd that they were in such demand, yet there were seemingly far more half-bloods or muggle adapted wizards and witches out there than she had imagined. If one operated outside of Hogwarts or the halls of the Ministry, both of which were entirely protected from the muggle world, it became quickly apparent that most of wizarding kind had a more complicated relationship with their muggle neighbors than a sequestered Hogwarts student might expect.
She had already passed her own building on her return trip. Though she tried to keep her strength up, she had long ago resorted to casting a lightening charm on the market bag. It looked stuffed to the average muggle, but Hermione knew that it held half a cart of food, at least.
She didn't bother going to her office, her day usually began with a few appointments first. They were all located within Waldweirness, though in the residential area.
No place could look further from that descriptor. Indeed, signs cautioning against entrance were posted on every chain link fence, all of them warning of grievous bodily harm and the dangers the buildings posed.
Hermione waved her wand over the padlock on the fence and heaved it open, the rusty hinge groaning its protest. Once inside, the fence safely padlocked again, (it had done on its own), the crumbling brick façade wavered indecisively before Hermione's eyes before giving way to rather comfortable, if uninspiring, terraced housing. They were each identical except for their ornamentation: the houses themselves were maintained by the Ministry, though at very little expense to them. The director during the war had managed, rather spectacularly, to avoid detection by requisitioning no funds for the duration of the conflict and doing all the repairs and upkeep himself.
As they were off campus, and as a cursory question into their activities provided the inquisitor an anemic and incredibly boring answer, they remained untouched and unmolested. No one escaped the Muggleborn purge of 97' but they could hardly help that. The WOE Department (though sometimes known as the Department of Woe), had done its best for those who depended on it.
This was not why Hermione found herself working for the WOE Department, but it did shore up the resolute loyalty she felt for her colleagues and their mission. She liked what she did. She valued what she contributed to the world.
These last things she repeated to herself each time her parents or the Weasleys glanced at her with disappointment or worry.
Harry was the deputy head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Ginny was on the coaching staff for England's National Quidditch Team.
Ron had married Hannah Abbot, who had opened her own dessert bakery. Ron, with his keen mind for strategy managed the business end. Within their first year in Hogsmeade they had become incredibly popular with the students, whose only other choice was Madam Puddifoot's. A couple of years later had seen them expand to a location in Diagon Alley- Hermione couldn't visit either district without seeing the Chudley-Cannons-Orange bakery boxes tucked under people's arms. Truly, Hermione was thrilled for her friends.
She wished anyone would be anywhere near as thrilled for her.
She knew that without a promotion or an achievement of any sort she hadn't in anyone's mind earned that. Even her own.
It seemed like everyone thought that she had forgotten that she was the bushy-maned menace of Gryffindor Tower. That she had lost her edge somehow.
Her knuckles rapped on the door of one of the houses. The minutes ticked by, but she was in no rush. It would have been a surprise to her if the door had been opened in any hurry. She might have even been alarmed.
While she waited, she shifted her two bags' weight on her shoulder. Reaching down into the crocheted market bag she rearranged the items within, dredging up a few of the frozen roast dinners and Aldi-brand biscuits. She found a few boxes of tea and arranged them close to the other items she had set aside. There. Now she could make a quick job of it… as quick as would be permitted to her—
The door swung open.
"Hermione! Good Morning, my dear! I hope you're very well?"
Hermione grinned at the stooped figure in the doorway. "I am very well, Mr. Forsythe, thank you. May I come in?"
"Naturally," he shuffled to the side, allowing her to pass. "We had a spot of trouble this past night,"
"Trouble? Is Mary okay? Do I need to see to her?"
"No, no, the healer saw to her—"
"You needed a healer?" Hermione didn't mean to press the old man the way she was, and she felt poorly about it, but the need for her to understand was too great.
"Oh dear, I had hoped not to alarm you,"
"I'm not alarmed Mr. Forsythe, I only mean to help. Is Mary okay for the moment while we speak?"
"She's resting upstairs. She won't take breakfast, and likely won't speak to me until it's time for tea," Mr. Forsythe remarked with some sadness.
"Martin, I'm very sorry," Hermione murmured to him, finally entering into the kitchen. "What happened last night?" She began pulling boxes from the bag, putting the frozen roast dinners into the enchanted ice box and setting aside the Forsythe's tea and biscuits. She observed that there were only a few slices of bacon left in the cooled pantry and resolved to pick up more.
"I had Wiggins and Hartman over for a spot of Wist in the parlour," It was moments like this where Hermione was reminded that Martin Forsythe was well over one hundred years old, "I used to go out with them every so often, but I can't leave Mary now," He looked forlorn again.
"I thought she had taken her sleeping drought, but she must have spit it out when I had my back turned. Midway through the game she burst into the parlour and screamed that I had kidnapped her. Said she had been taken by a gang of ruffians and Mudbloods,"
Hermione winced. "Not one of her better nights then?"
His whitened temples shook back and forth. "No. Indeed not."
"Why did you need the healer? Surely, between the three of you—"
"Ah," his chuckle had a raspy quality, "We are but old men, my dear." His face sobered. "I fear Mary's power."
"Her magical power? You've mentioned your own has grown somewhat weaker—"
"And yet she grows stronger. She doesn't know me from Merlin but her magic now is more robust than even it was immediately after she had our children," He was looking far away to his past. "It was the three of us men who needed the healers, Hermione. They only provided her with a sedative. She's already forgotten. This morning when I saw to her, she remembered me as our eldest son." His eyes shown with suppressed tears.
"Martin, there are a few things I can do for you," Hermione said hesitatingly, already anticipating his answer.
He did not disappoint. "No, I shan't. She's my good wife, she'll be here with me. That's what we signed on for."
"She's hurting you, Martin," Hermione offered gently. "She doesn't mean to, and I know she never hurt you when she was well, but— we have greater degrees of support we can offer. You only need to let me know and I'll arrange a room at St. Auberts."
Hermione had said this exact thing to Martin Forsythe on several occasions in the past. He usually reacted with congenial defensiveness and laughed her off. This time he nodded his head wearily and simply looked dejected. "You won't be abandoning her; you can see her every day." Hermione laid her hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze before excusing herself for the morning.
She made trips to five other houses, some of them her charges, some of them cases she had picked up from her coworkers or had arranged to switch around. It was after noon by the time she was swinging the chain link fence closed again.
From the residential area, which was disguised as a derelict factory, to her offices in the Ministry, which were concealed behind the glamour of a decommissioned dockyard, was only a ten-minute walk.
Mary Forsythe weighed heavily on her mind.
The aging matron was an imperious figure, even as slight and frail as she appeared in her dressing gown. She too was well over one hundred and had hundred-year-old blood prejudices to accompany her. Her mind occupied several key portions of her life: the time of the birth of the Forsythe's first child, her Hogwarts years when she was a sought-after debutante, and, if the right conditions were met, of being in her mid-eighties: naturally, Martin's favorite version of his wife.
As her decline hastened, her magic seemed to grow beyond the bounds of her control. This was one way in which this condition could manifest. In contrast, Dumbledore's magic had weakened as he had deteriorated, Hermione didn't think that was only because of the curse. She hadn't voiced her suspicions to anyone in the Order, particularly as the War was over and done, and Albus Dumbledore was long dead—but in the years preceding her sixth she had noticed a worrying trend of suspect behavior and reasoning on Dumbledore's part. She had read about him for years before attending Hogwarts. The Albus Dumbledore she had known was no longer the man who had defeated Grindelwald.
He was wily, she gave him that. He covered for his faltering by making it appear as if his weaker moments were mere quirks of his personality. Long pauses, appraising glances. Vague instructions given to important operatives in wartime. That it had worked was a relief, but Hermione felt certain of what she saw.
Albus Dumbledore had Luenfeldter's Dementia. Wizarding Dementia.
Hermione had observed the Headmaster keenly that last year. Snape had seemed to have stopped the curse on Dumbledore's hand—his mind simply went on its own. No doubt he may have had another year longer than he had ultimately lasted, but the potion he consumed in the cave with Harry had all but done him to death. There would have been no rescuing his diseased memory from its clutches.
Hermione would be uniquely positioned to know. It had been the subject of her mastery in University. Naturally, magic had been sidelined in favor of harder sciences which were able to be appraised by muggles, nonetheless, the focus of her research was on the progression of Luenfeldter's in the wizarding population.
It had been a tricky bit of manipulation on her part to have the proposal approved, which had involved the Australian Ministry of Magic and the magical branch of the school. With an enormous degree of negotiation between herself, the government, and the school, both magical and muggle, a way forward had been agreed upon and the muggles' perceptions had been accordingly altered.
Hermione felt atrocious over the ultimate culmination of events and had been originally hoping not to involve any authorities or Oblivators, and yet her research had found its way onto the desks of important people.
There was no helping it. Her joint focus in Psychology and Gerontology was uniquely suited for Luenfeldter's research. Wizarding academic rigour simply wasn't up for the task. There existed no framework for observation nor study.
Very little was known about the difficulties which befell witches and wizards as they aged. The population often lived in isolation. The purebloods occupied ancient manors and were upkept by their house-elves, or more rarely, their own offspring. The half-bloods were something of an unknown entity, and Hermione and discovered through her research that a significant number of muggleborn Luenfeldter's sufferers were admitted to Muggle homes for the elderly as Alzheimer's patients (often to disastrous effect, whenever the poor witch or wizard would let loose accidental magic in their distress).
She had spent six years in study, anxiously trying to hack away at the carapace of mystique surrounding the disease before she had given it up.
It wasn't with heaviness of heart or spirit, which surprised her parents and advisors. She earned her diplomas and notified her parents that she'd be coming with them back the England. This alone did nothing to arouse their curiosity, but her actions upon her return did.
She applied immediately for the Wizarding Outreach to the Elderly Department, was handily accepted, and focused all her most passionate energies on delivering hands-on care.
To say that her family and friends were surprised is not enough. They were flabbergasted. They were also stuck, as Hermione knew. There was nothing unseemly about being a social worker. None of them said aloud that they thought the position to be utterly beneath her and her skills. None save her mother, who had taken it quite personally that her daughter would attend a secretive private school for six years, obliviate her, and fight a whole war only to be allowed the privilege of becoming a low-level government employee. Not when her daughter was as brilliant and bright as she was.
It was good to be bright; Hermione knew. Wonderful even. She had always relished being clever. As she had grown there was only so much crowing about that she could take anymore. She craved the irrelevance she had been able to embrace in Adelaide. No one was looking at her expecting her to save the world until she had submitted her proposal. She had space to decide who she wanted to be, something she hadn't had since she was twelve and had started down the path to being Harry Potter's best friend. She had even managed to summon the courage to skip a class or two. It had been thrilling. The tea she had picked up had tasted so much better those mornings.
She had done a lot of people watching in Australia. Just about anyone. The young. The old. Men and women both. She had watched widows and toddlers and young couples and groups of friends. There had been families of seven, or sometimes just a man and his dog. There were so many flavors to life. So much on offer.
She could have exactly what she wanted out of life. With a little input. A little elbow grease. All that remained was to decide exactly what it was that she wanted. When she considered a life in academia, with its unrelenting pursuit of the unknown, with its constant arousal of existential concern, she found it didn't inspire much more than a bone deep dread. She cared a great deal for most of all of creation. At twenty-six, she had had to decide whether she could stand the burden of all of society's woe upon her shoulders: it wasn't a difficult choice.
She chose to care concretely, in ways which were measurable. To accommodate those who were out of options and to extend the hand of any resources she had available—her job mattered very much to the people she met with on a day-to-day basis! She could research on her own time. She often did. But this work she found to be fortifying for her soul.
She was paid a clerk's salary, it was true, and half of her income went to her rent, but she and Crooks made do. She didn't want much for herself, and aside from Crookshanks' expensive taste in meat she had little overhead. The groceries she bought for her clients were paid for by the Department stipend and she rarely shelled out for any reason besides Christmas: she found she enjoyed the delight with which her godchildren and clients received their yearly gifts. The act of choosing something special for each person was a privilege she awaited every year with anticipatory glee.
Her bags thudded loudly on the shellacked surface of her desk. The market bag was mostly empty now but still contained a couple of tins of beans and boxes of biscuits.
The airy office was festooned with the kind of woodwork the Ministry was evidently partial to. It was in glaring opposition to the derelict exterior.
She was settled in with three other ladies in the room, each to a desk in their own corner. At the centre of the room was a common table with stacks of organized parchments: hundreds, perhaps thousands of copies of important forms, empty and ready to be filled in and filed. Stamps and ink pads occupied one end, along with a quill stand and an assortment of coloured ink pots.
Hermione had scarcely managed to set her overburdened bags down when a commotion to her rear caught her attention.
A visibly distraught woman had hurried into the office, only moments behind her. Before Hermione could blink the woman had caught sight of her: the only employee still standing and not seemingly focused on something else. She made a hurried beeline to stand before the younger woman, her eyes flitting around in nervous excitement.
"Er… Hi? Ehm, Hello—" momentarily caught off guard, Hermione fumbled through her gaff, "Can I help you?" She tried again, this time with more success.
The strange woman twisted her hands together and heaved a shuddering breath, "Oh, I hope so!" Her eyes were at once pleading and indignant. And with seeming reluctance, she added: "Yours was the last office I've been shunted to." The statement was delivered with no little resentment.
Her accent was curious, a kind of denatured mess of clipped pureblooded enunciation and an unknown other which Hermione couldn't quite identify.
"My apologies for the runaround," Hermione beamed reassuringly at the woman, hoping to smooth over her earlier error, "We can be a bit disorganised on the best of days, at the Ministry. I'm Hermione Granger, Community Liaison and Coordinator, and may I welcome you to the Wizarding Outreach to the Elderly Department?" Hermione began to maneuver her newest client back towards an extra chair pulled up to her desk.
"Community Liaison and Coordinator?" The woman sniffed delicately once she was seated. Her mouth formed a moue of distaste even as her eyes were cast fearfully down and to the side. "In the muggle world they'd just call you a social worker."
"Honestly, I'd prefer that." Hermione offered back conspiratorially.
"Why? They're not worth anything either,"
Hermione's lips pressed together, and she managed a thin smile, hoping she didn't come across as too aggrieved at the commentary, but the woman wasn't finished.
"Trust me, girl. The muggle 'social workers' aren't worth a pot to piss in, they can't help nobody, and protect nobody neither."
Each bald-faced pronunciation threw Hermione for a few moments. The woman, though cowering in on herself, her slight shoulders slumped as if they had been so for sixty years (and indeed perhaps they had), had a sort of power to her odd, incongruous speech that lent it a degree of gravitas. It demanded she attend the woman closely.
"Can I ask your name?"
Impossibly, the woman seemed to dither over the simple question. Her lined face curled into a regretful grimace, and while she struggled with herself, Hermione took a moment to take stock of her features.
She was a pale and drawn thing, clothed even in the warm weather in well-worn woolens. Her cardigan looked as if it had been knit by hand and then repaired several times in the elbow and at the hem. She had a perfectly straight head of silvering black hair that curtained her shoulders down past her armpits.
Her posture, aside from her slump, was formal: her hands gripped together in her lap, ankles crossed demurely to the side at an angle and her knees pressed firmly together.
The woman had yet to make eye contact, but from what Hermione had observed, her eyes appeared to be a shocking black. She had held them downcast and to the side, even as she had caustically rebuffed Hermione's kindness. Her face was thin and not untouched by time, her eyes large in its frame. She had a lower lip which pouted somewhat piteously and a pointed little chin. In all, Hermione observed, not unlike a Banshee if it had made it off the moors and into civilization.
"Nora."
"I'm sorry? Nora-?"
"Nora Crombe."
While the woman had been deciding on whether to tell Hermione her name, she had retrieved a quill and a spare form and had filled in Nora's name upon being told. "Is that spelled C-R-O-M-B-E as I would expect, or…?"
"Er, yes. You're exactly right, I should think."
Hermione peered up at the woman quizzically.
"How can we help you today Nora, would you care to tell me what's brought you by?"
"It was put to me that you people could help an old witch find accommodations." Nora said baldly. Hermione read shame and grief in the woman's eyes and in the way she twisted at her thumbs in her lap.
"Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?"
"I had a place," Nora appeared to bristle remembering something not far off, "I had a place for near thirty years—the damn mugg…muggles—" she succumbed to a bout of tears and disappeared behind her bony white hands.
"So nowhere for tonight then, Nora?"
"No, nowhere," the frail woman seemed to shudder in defeat.
Hermione moved to her desk. She had found that moving to help her clients materially was the first and best practicable option. Early in her career, she had spent hours commiserating with each witch and wizard who sought her office, but after a year of this kind of emotional overreach she had found herself on the brink of being housebound—too anxious about the state of suffering in the world to forge forward, before her friends had intervened and taken her on holiday with their young families.
She found her clients benefited most when she was quick with the paperwork, provided as much direct aid as was required in a timely way, and didn't press them to share the extent of their woes. Her ear remained open, her heart to an even greater degree. Sometimes she learned what had brought each of them to their present states, sometimes she never got to know.
"I'll need these forms filled in," she passed over a scroll of parchment, some four feet in length, and a self-inking quill, "just do the best you can: if you don't know the answer or an address, it's okay if you put your best approximation."
Nora labored over the parchment for some ten minutes, though she seemed to be providing answers readily enough. She sniffled over some of the questions on the family portion of the questionnaire, and finally, when reaching the portion devoted to prior residence, began to speak again.
"Where will you put me tonight?" her eyes searched Hermione's, red rimmed and paranoid.
Hermione tried to smile reassuringly, putting her most professional face on. "We have a number of full-time houses available to witches and wizards without the ability to provide for themselves, whether through disability or advanced age, though these houses need to be qualified into… In the meantime I can put you up in an empty one until you either qualify for full-time housing or are capable of finding and sustaining your own accommodations."
"And how do you people decide who's qualified for full-time housing?"
"I'll be reviewing your paperwork this evening. Ultimately, it is up to the head of our department, though I will be the caseworker assigned to defend your claim if there's any fuss,"
The older witch sneered, an eerily familiar baring of her canine, "How arbitrary."
Hermione couldn't help herself: "You seemed acquainted with the muggle system, you should know that the wizarding one is quite a bit more antiquated."
Nora then crumpled into her own lap, "No need to mention the muggles to me, girl, none at all!" what had begun as a whisper ended in a mild exclamation.
"I'll do my best for you, Nora, if that's what you're worried about." Hermione ventured to put a hand on Nora's forearm. "Our head's not an unreasonable wizard, if you need full time housing, I will see what I can get done for you."
Nora had sunk once again into her chair, and was hidden behind a curtain of hair. She plucked at a loose yarn in the hem of her cardigan. "Thank you."
Instead of answering, Hermione stood and beckoned the older witch to follow her. She picked up her bags again and signaled to her office mates that she was intending to head out, before escorting Nora Crombe out into the industrial park.
"And, this, is my mind
And although you try to infringe
You cannot confine
And, this, is my brain
And even if you try and hold me back
There's nothing that you can gain"
"Mouthwash" (reprise) – Kate Nash