"You can tell
From the glass on the floor
And the strings that're breaking
And I keep on breaking more
And it looks like I am shaking
But it's just the temperature"
"Girl Anachronism" – The Dresden Dolls
"I packed you extra nappies in these pockets here, and the blue dummy belongs to Albus, but James will probably try and swipe it from him if you're not careful—if he does, I ask that you scold him for it, he knows better, the little devil. This is the milk I placed under stasis for Al, all you have to do is cancel the charm and warm it for him—" Ginny rambled, piling things into her friend's overladen arms.
Hermione was doing her level best to avoid looking as overwhelmed as she felt by the deluge of instructions, but she'd yet to meet a challenge she couldn't overcome, or a list of directions she couldn't follow, so she nodded along as Ginny lectured, taking mental notes.
Holding a large jar of her friend's breastmilk was admittedly a bit odd, she had to confess... but she shrunk it with her wand and stashed it away with the rest of the toys, and blankets, and nappies, and clothes, and... oh, but it was endless, really. Her face betrayed nothing of her thoughts, which she was quite proud of.
She'd been there for half an hour already, and she was only planning on supervising the two Potter children for a single afternoon. The witch couldn't help but think that this was a bit much.
"Gin, I think she's got it."
Harry Potter had poked his head around the corner and was surveying his wife with an amused grimace as he flipped the long end of his tie over the knot and worked it through.
"Besides, I'll have them again after work, it's just a few hours..."
"I just want to make sure she's prepared, is all!" The red-headed witch whined, she glanced in the over-large bag she'd supplied her friend once more, taking stock of the items she was supplying. "I don't think I'm forgetting anything..."
"Al will survive an afternoon without all of his odds and ends, love—"
"But will Hermione survive an afternoon with Al without it?" Ginny worried aloud, fretting over what looked to be a blanket. "See? James will need his toys or he'll be beastly to Al—"
"I'm sure Eileen and I will handle them just fine," Hermione interrupted, trying to placate her the best she could.
Harry beamed and made his way over to the two, a squirming James caught up in the crook of his elbow like a sack of potatoes. "See? She's got it all under control. And besides, I told James that he'd better be on his best behaviour for 'Ant 'Leen' or she won't want to see him again—"
"Daddy said 'No nonisens,' Mummy,"
"None whatsoever," Harry agreed, patting Jaimie on his auburn head smartly and giving the small boy a grin. "Or?"
"Or: 'D'TEN-SHIN, POTTER!'"
Hermione could barely contain her inelegant snort at the implication, and she gently pried James out of his father's hands and settled him on her hip.
"That, and she'll take all your house points," Hermione teased him, sticking one finger under his armpit to tickle the giggling toddler.
"I want get points, Maio—"
Hermione smooched him on one of his many cowlicks. "Then you'd best be good for Eileen."
Ginny helped to hang the overladen bag on Hermione's other shoulder and took her elder son from the brunette, pecking him on the forehead and regarding him seriously for a moment: "That means that you are to leave Al alone, Jamie. No taking toys from him if he's playing with them first—"
"He cries." James scowled with a pout. "What if I wanna—"
"You let him play with the toy, James. He's too young to know how to share, so you have to be a good older brother and teach him how,"
"Be good," James repeated, thoughtful.
"Yes, good."
This time, Hermione was handed Al, who was napping and whose head lolled on her shoulder with a small string of spit forming under his wide-open mouth. He snored gently in her ear. She used her other arm supporting the nappy bag to grasp James' small hand in her own and gave a level look to her friends.
"All right? Am I cleared to take off?" she asked, only slightly mocking.
Harry grinned at her and gave her an informal salute. "You're all set I think. I'll see you later tonight to get the little goblins back,"
Ginny looked like she was about to start fretting again, and was gnawing at her bottom lip, "Oh but—"
Yet Hermione had already swept the two children out the door, hastily calling her goodbyes over her shoulder and wishing the red-head a happy holiday as she shepherded James ahead of her.
Dropping the two children off with Eileen was another small hassle, involving the curly-haired witch taking great pains to pass along Ginny's instructions while Eileen rolled her black eyes and snorted in derision.
"I'm familiar with when and how to feed a baby, Ms. Granger—"
Hermione twisted her lips in order to restrain the sarcastic reply that jumped to mind. "I'm aware of that, Eileen. Now, for naps—"
"Ach! I'll put him down when he begins to fuss. It's hardly advanced Arithmancy. Little boys tire themselves out, and the more they grumble, the more ready they are for a bit of shut-eye."
"Okay, but—"
At this Eileen had evidently had enough, and she grabbed up the nappy bag, seized James' hand in her own, and led him to the sitting room, where she joined him in removing his toys to the small rug before the fireplace.
Albus was already resting in a magically suspended bouncer that Hermione had enchanted, and was batting his arms at a mobile festooned with quidditch players and quaffles.
"I think that'll be all, Ms. Granger," Eileen said, dismissively, not even deigning to look over her shoulder as she beamed down at James, who was already rummaging through the toys he'd packed.
"MUUuuhhahhh!" Albus shouted, gesticulating wildly at the two, his hands reaching out for a toy James had taken out of the bag.
"Noo, Al—I play with Ant 'Leen!"
Eileen barked out a small laugh and picked out a small stuffed doll of what looked to be King Arthur and handed him to Albus, who began gumming at his scabbard. "Now little James, I think you'll find I can manage to play with both of you..."
Hermione surveyed them for a few moments more, but it was clear that the older witch had the two boys well in hand, even though she'd never raised more than one child herself, and forty years ago at that. She began to back out the door with a wry smile and closed the door softly behind her, not wanting to disturb the happy tableau the three made.
It was rather lucky that it wasn't a grocery day, she reflected as she trudged down the alleyways that led to the office building. Otherwise, she may not have had time to do her normal pick-up routine. She'd planned her week in order to be able to reserve mostly boring paperwork for Friday, and she didn't anticipate that it would take her that long, at that.
On the way to the office, she performed a handful of welfare checks, making note of supplies that were running low, stopping to chat with some of the caretakers where needed, and assisting some of the Luenfelders residents with tasks about their homes, at times having to pretend to be someone from a far off place or age that the witch or wizard remembered.
Not all of her residents suffered from dementia, some of them had degrees of magical hypotrophy leading to a loss of control, or a progressively worsening level of competency with even the most basic of charms and spells. Particularly for pureblooded witches and wizards this could pose a problem, as finding non-magical alternatives to their normal ways of doing things was an enormous adjustment, thus Hermione spent a good portion of her week teaching elderly purebloods such banalities as how to heat their water using the cooker, or how to clean the muggle way, with varying degrees of success. Naturally, her job was made more difficult by the fact that in their advanced age, doing things the muggle way would have been becoming progressively more difficult even if they'd managed without magic their entire lives.
A catch-22, she reflected. Though she disapproved of house-elf labour, at least as it had been historically conducted, given the plight of many house-elves now, would it be so bad if they were paid by the Ministry to work in Waldweirness for some of the residents who were struggling? She knew that they'd agreed to pay (though it seemed a pittance) to the house-elves that worked the canteen in the atrium at Blackhall. There were precious few jobs for house-elves anymore.
The department served an important function in the wizarding world, and she was proud to be a part of it... however she often felt that there were a number of oversights and inefficiencies that could be addressed with even just a little bit of renegotiation and foresight.
The witch sighed as she entered the derelict factory housing her office. As always, it transformed before her very eyes into a sprawling, gorgeous, wood-paneled hall, with mosaic stone floors, and a retinue of helpful (and sometimes not so helpful) portraits, calling to her in greeting.
She waved at a few of her favourites as she passed and returned their salutations. Near her office she was heralded by one of the more ancient paintings, a stooped alchemist whom no one remembered the name of, and who was resistant to telling anyone himself.
He beckoned her over to his portrait and looked at her with a strangely sympathetic expression before he bade her follow him and set off through a line of other paintings.
Hermione was perplexed, having never spoken to the alchemist, and having never been intercepted by a portrait at work before, but she followed him closely, looking for him waving to her from an industrial cityscape here, or a landscape depicting rolling pastures there.
Finally, he hopped up on a painting of an old, crumbling stone enclosure and gestured with his walking stick toward the door adjacent to the painting, which, Hermione realized with some trepidation, was the door to her superior's office.
It was standing open, and the man in question was bent double over various scraps of paperwork, scribbling furiously with his squashed nose almost pressing to the desktop, so the witch knocked at the door frame to announce her presence, and when that wasn't enough, coughed loudly.
"Mr. Maynard?"
"Mmmm?"
"Mr. Maynard, did you send the... erm... the alchemist for me?"
Mr. Maynard looked up at her, his eyes, enormous in his face like an old basset hound's, giving him a perpetually hang dog look. He looked no less perturbed on this occasion. In fact, to Hermione's discomfort, he looked even more regretful and harried than usual.
"I... yes, Ms. Granger, I did. I'm sorry, I'd almost forgotten already. Come, have a seat."
Mr. Maynard may have looked a bit like Charlie Chaplin had he not been incredibly paunchy, and on the short side. Though he sported a moustache and hair cut that, if she were being kind, looked like the former silent film legend, and if she were being unkind, made him look a bit like a certain megalomaniacal muggle dictator, his mannerisms were unlike either men—seeming, often, to paint him as some sad, but comic, character in a tragedy.
Though often preoccupied, he wasn't a bad man by any means, and he took on the agony of his residents with a strength of compassion that could be at times staggering. This, unfortunately, left him with few resources for anyone else in his life. He was a man of singular mission, but, on the other hand... to his detriment: he was a bureaucrat.
When he'd finally managed to rally his mental faculties and focus, he started in on her with laser-like intent.
"Ms. Granger, were you aware that your annual review was pending?"
Hermione shook her head and gave him a somewhat bewildered look. She'd known that after her first year working there that she had been evaluated, and that she'd passed muster with enough good will from her residents and colleagues that she was no longer considered in a probationary period. She hadn't thought that they would continue to review her after that first year... in fact, this was the first year since that initial annual review that she'd heard any feedback on her performance whatsoever.
She went ahead and said as much.
"Ah, quite, Ms. Granger. And your reviews are as they ever were. Orders on high were for us to reevaluate all of our employees on their hire dates this year: we're not special in that regard. I talked to my counterpart in the Department of Surviving Adult Dependents—"
"Where Christopher was transferred from?" Hermione interrupted, uncertain where this was going.
Mr. Maynard blustered for a moment, having lost his train of thought, "Well... Christopher was a special case, but yes, he came through SAD before he was assigned to us. Mind you his relatives are still alive, but—" He shook his head violently and scowled at Hermione for distracting him, "nevermind that, Ms. Granger. Owens, over in SAD told me that he was being asked to evaluate his employees on their annual hire date, same as we are, and that he heard from other Department Heads that it's happening all over."
Hermione swallowed and offered a rather weak smile. "Alright, sir. May I assume that my review was satisfactory, or is there room for improvement?" It galled her to have to ask, on one level, but she'd left her pride when she'd sought employment. If there were complaints from residents, she wanted to face them as a woman, and not as a girl, intent on throwing a temper tantrum that someone may have found cause not to like her or her methods.
This time, Maynard gave her an odd look that the witch did not like the looks of one bit. It was too familiar... with a start, Hermione realized it was the same look of pity that the old alchemist had worn moments before when he'd summoned her to Maynard's door.
"I, er... that is to say, we..." He swallowed and averted his eyes, fussing with a slip of lime green parchment that was lying in a thick folder.
A folder with her name on it.
"Ms. Granger, I'm very sorry to say that it has come to our attention that you have a blemish in your record that can't be overlooked. I'm afraid this will be your last day at Waldweirness."
At her astonished look, he turned the green parchment around and passed it to her, without another word, and allowed her to look for herself.
She received the document with shaking hands and scowled at it, willing the words swimming before her eyes to make even a modicum of sense.
INFORMAL INSTANCE OF ILL-WILL
Pursuant to the statutes laid out in full in Wizengamot decree № 5608, signed into law in the 299th session of the aforementioned venerable institution and ratified by Minister for Magic Barnam Aethelfromm on June 20th, 2006, any discussion relating to the standing of house-elves, werewolves, centaurs, vampires, giants, goblins, veela, muggleborns, muggles, or any combinate variation thereof wherein the participant in said discussion disparages, denigrates, mocks, or otherwise questions the validity or belonging of above-mentioned identities within wizarding society may be recorded and filed under the new designation: Informal Instance of Ill-Will (hereafter referred to as an I3W).
Pursuant to the statutes laid out in full in Wizengamot decree № 5609, signed into law in the 299th session of the aforementioned venerable institution and ratified by Minister for Magic Barnam Aethelfromm on June 20th, 2006, all I3W records are required to be filed by the Ministry of Magic with individual census and population data until such a time as new legislation renders the current edicts obsolete, or until such a time as all I3W forms undergo revision or updating, subject to any decrees which may follow.
Instance № 36
Issued on behalf of Hermione Granger
Issued by Magical Law Enforcement Auror Gerald Rudd on November 3rd, 2006
Ms. Granger was reported by REDACTED to have questioned the tax status of muggleborn witches and wizards and to have cast aspersions on ongoing investigations into REDACTED-REDACTED-REDACTED-REDACTED. After review by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the investigation of which was determined to be legitimate and above suspicion. Ms. Granger was said to have suggested that not enough muggleborns were under similar investigation, casting doubts onto the regard to which she holds witches and wizards of muggle origin.
To say that Hermione was flabbergasted would perhaps have been an understatement. She was fixed to her chair, her eyes held captive by the short document that she'd now re-read some ten times, and her mouth worked in mute stupefaction, unable to articulate even a single word in her own defense.
Who could ever cast doubts on her view of muggles? She'd only had one conversation with anyone about the subject of the new tax evaluations and that had been... Harry...
Surely, Harry wouldn't have reported her to his superiors... He wasn't the sort to run and tattle...
"This must be some sort of misunderstanding..." she finally mumbled, her eyes wide with shock, still riveted on the bit of lime parchment.
At length, Mr. Maynard sighed deeply. "I wish it were so, Ms. Granger. And perhaps, at that, it is... but my directives were quite clear: anyone sporting such a mark on their record is no longer eligible for employment in my office, and I'm afraid my only choice is to bid you leave."
Finally, Hermione looked up, and to her horror, she realized that her eyes were beginning to grow glassy with barely restrained tears of frustration and anger. "Please, Mr. Maynard, I love my job here—I love the residents. All I want is to help... My parents are muggles for God's sake, I don't have any problems with muggles—"
Maynard shook his head sadly and reached over to work the parchment out of her clenched fists, placing it back in her personnel file with a small pat. "A fact of which I do not doubt, my dear, but I'm in no position to argue—"
"Surely, I can appeal this! I was never told... I was given no warning—"
"I'm sure there's someone to whom you can complain, Ms. Granger, and should you manage to have this stripped from your record, I'd be happy to welcome you back, but while this remains in your file, my hands are tied."
"I... I wasn't charged with anything, Mr. Maynard! Are you saying I don't even have a chance to defend myself against that..." she brandished an arm at the offending paperwork, "... that lie? I—I wasn't suggesting we should investigate muggleborns for tax fraud! I was—"
"I suggest, Ms. Granger," Mr. Maynard stared her down, his perpetually sad eyes turning hard, "That you not say a word more about it." At this, he withdrew a stack of the lime slips, all empty, it would appear, and patted them with great significance. "Lest my hand be forced." He raised both eyebrows at her, urging her, it would seem, to accept his warning.
Hermione's eyes grew wide and her face darkened into a scowl, "Are you saying—"
Abruptly, he shushed her, and cast a wary look about the room she was in, again wagging his eyebrows at her and giving her a pleading look. "I caution you, in the future, to watch your words,"
Finally, the knut dropped, and Hermione swallowed thickly, joining him in casting her eyes about the room. Apparently her superior suspected that he might have been under observation. She took several seconds to draw in a few ragged breaths before she straightened her spine, clutched her bags to herself, and rose with a grim nod to her former employer.
"Is... is there anything else, Mr. Maynard?"
"I'm afraid not, my dear. Though I will have to ask you to vacate Waldweirness at your earliest convenience."
For a moment, Hermione panicked, thinking about the two little boys she had left with Eileen Snape. "I... I left a bit of property with one of the residents. She's become a friend—don't I have time to go get it? May I visit her?"
Maynard seemed to think for a long moment, but shook his head sadly. "Today, you can go to retrieve what is yours, but I'm afraid visitation to Waldweirness is a privilege and not a right. All of the property is owned by the Ministry, and as such, they've placed strictures on who may or may not come and go at leisure. I'm afraid anyone whose been let go from working for us isn't allowed back—a precaution, you understand, against any sort of retribution from disgruntled former employees. Make sure that you get anything that you consider your own by sundown: that's my suggestion to you, Ms. Granger."
She didn't say another word to him. She couldn't. It was all she could do to make it out of the building without running into a doorframe with her sight obstructed by the haze of readily flowing hot tears.
"And you can tell
By the red in my eyes
And the bruises on my thighs
And the knots in my hair
And the bathtub full of flies
That I'm not right now at all"
"Girl Anachronism" (reprise) – The Dresden Dolls