A/N: Guys, thanks so much for your reviews! They are so appreciated! It's always darkest before the dawn... though... erm... it might feel a bit like we're in Alaska, where night lasts for nearly the entire day in autumn. That being said, this is more than just a tragedy, I promise! But, don't be discouraged to find that we've not yet reached rock bottom.
"Heard you think I'm hurt
Said I'm losing sleep
Yeah, you fucked me over, but I'm over you and me
Didn't even cry
So now it's guaranteed
You're gonna spend forever, ever thinking about me, oh"
"Hurt" – Lost Kings ft. DeathbyRomy
Easter came and went in a flurry of activity. The residents saw more visitors than Hermione had ever previously seen come through Marigold, most with guilty countenances that underscored the fact that perhaps the only time the families came to visit were on major holidays or the residents' birthdays. What should have been a time of celebration and joy was instead marked by an all too palpable grief, as many of the inhabitants of Marigold House hadn't the first idea why they were suddenly being beset by strangers who insisted that not only were they related, but that they also would have to endure their company for the day, complete with rambunctious toddlers and reticent, gloomy teenagers. It was an exercise in low-grade torture for all involved, and due to a shortage in staff, Hermione endured two shifts of it.
Though Hermione wasn't able to join the Potters and Weasleys, she welcomed the left-overs that Mrs. Weasley had thoughtfully sent home with Ginny and ate a steady diet of carved-ham sandwiches for most of the week after the holiday. Near the end it seemed as if it was beginning to disagree with her, however, as she found herself once or twice forcing down sick in the bathroom at Marigold House.
In the end, she realized that she shouldn't have bothered to skip on the family holiday. She may as well have scheduled for time off, as she was pulled aside after one of her bouts of leftover-potato-salad-induced illness to attend to her supervisor.
"Hermione, a moment, if you please?"
The witch glanced up at the serene features of Mrs. Jain, who ran the administrative side of Marigold House's memory ward. She was hanging out the door of her office and beckoned the young woman to join her just as Hermione had been exiting the loo.
After a few moments in which the two women arranged themselves across the desk from one another, Mrs. Jain offered Hermione a tea-bag and some hot water out of an electric kettle that sat atop a metal filing cabinet.
The woman seemed to wait for a moment as Hermione took a grateful, fortifying sip of the orange pekoe she'd prepared herself before she gently laid a folder down on the desk between them.
The younger woman started at the sight of it and all but spilled her tea down her front, before she gulped audibly.
"Mrs. Jain, please—"
Shaking her head with a somewhat rueful expression, the older woman gave Hermione a small, wry grimace. "I had hoped to start off this meeting on a stronger note, so you'll have to forgive me, Hermione. If it were up to me, you'd not be sitting there at all,"
"You can't mean—"
"I'm afraid I've been given directives for your dismissal, Ms. Granger, effective immediately." Mrs. Jain interrupted. Her gentle expression was belied only by the steely glint in her eyes and the finality with which she delivered the news.
It being the second such dismissal Hermione had endured since the beginning of the year, the witch suppressed her innate first reaction: to argue or bargain. After all, it'd done nothing to soften the blow with Mr. Maynard, and it hadn't resulted in her maintaining her position either.
With her lip wobbling dangerously, she took a careful sip from her mug and swallowed it, though it was too hot for her to do so comfortably. It was likely a sign of her discomfiture that she barely noticed how the tea scalded her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
"I was given to understand that were I to be dismissed there would be notice given," she said at length, her voice as even as she could hope to make it. "Is this my notice, or—"
Her supervisor gave her a look that was so pitying that it bordered on condescension. "I'm afraid not, dear. Today will be your last day with us,"
Hermione glared back, in no mood for niceties by this point. Her stomach was still roiling from the spoiled food and neither the tea, nor the present circumstances were doing anything to mitigate the horrendous discomfort she suffered. "I don't think I understand, Mrs. Jain. Did I violate my contract? Have I ever been tardy to work? Was the quality of my services insufficient or inappropriate?" she demanded, her lips drawn so thin and pressed so tightly that they were nearly white with her rage.
At Waldweirness she had been taken aback. Horrified and saddened. At Marigold she felt nothing but pure fury. She'd done everything she could to be a valuable member of the team. She didn't complain, and she certainly didn't lampoon the residents in the staff room as her coworkers enjoyed doing.
With a mighty effort, Hermione endeavored to suppress her rising gorge. "I think I'm entitled to an explanation, at the very least Mrs. Jain," she bit out, "though it might be vain of me to say so, I don't think I've been anything besides a model employee, and I certainly know that you're not overstaffed—"
"There have been complaints made, dear," Mrs. Jain sighed, her eyes soft, "It seems that you don't exactly fit into the culture here,"
"The culture of mocking our residents who are supposedly too far gone to notice or care? Who have no means of defending themselves—"
"See right here, Granger—this is why the other nurses and staff are a bit chary of you: they're afraid to do their jobs lest they find a complaint filed against them," Mrs. Jain spoke to her with a sort of painful condescension, as if she were explaining something to a particularly dimwitted child.
Hermione scowled back, wounded and indignant. "If they didn't want to be reported on, perhaps they shouldn't do things that violate the dignity of our clients. I won't apologize for complaining about Digby,"
"He only used the force that was explicitly necessary with Mr. Winslow, our CCTV footage showed that—"
The witch growled, low in her throat, "Did the CCTV pick up Digby's words? Did your footage show how he called him a 'stinking old cunt' and how he told him he'd never get another visitor again?"
"Dear," Mrs. Jain drawled, with obviously feigned patience, "that hardly matters when Mr. Winslow can't recall anything past the most recent five minutes of his life,"
"I'm not your dear!" Hermione shouted, incensed. "And it does matter! Geeta and Marian were so nasty to Mrs. Gregson over her garden parties that she cried!"
"D—Hermione, she doesn't remember—"
"She remembered that she was hurt! She remembered that she had something to cry about! Mrs. Gregson was distraught for days after—she knew it was Geeta and Marian! She would only mumble around them for the next week after it had happened. It broke her trust!"
Mrs. Jain seemed to draw herself up and her generally pleasant countenance took on a new, steely determination. "You broke trust with your coworkers by playing tattle-tale, Hermione. I can't have someone here who sells out everyone else. It's bad for morale,"
Hermione's face showed her utter amazement. "I'm bad for morale? Me? It couldn't possibly be that having staff here that routinely dehumanize and mock our residents is the real cause of any bad blood,"
"Bad blood with the residents perhaps," Mrs. Jain sneered, her pleasant affectation having fallen entirely by the wayside by this point. "You weren't brought on to be a representative for the invalids we serve Hermione, nor for their families. You were brought on to be a part of our team, and that means buttoning that lip of yours when one of your teammates needs to let off a little bit of steam, so long as it harms no one,"
The brunette crossed her arms and moved to rise from her chair. "I can see the harm that it did, Mrs. Jain. I don't know whether you yourself were complicit in it—I wouldn't have thought so, but it seems you're a rather different sort than you'd painted yourself to be—keep your dismissal paperwork. I'll save you the trouble. I quit."
In the aftermath, Hermione had made her way to her locker to clean it out and had stuffed her belongings into her bottomless-pit of a bag before she blindly, through a haze of tears, tried to get to the apparition point by the ambulance bay behind Wittington Hospital.
By the time she made it to Grimmauld Place, she was huffing with exertion, and trying to wipe her face of the tears and mucus she'd produced along the way. It had unfortunately earned her some pitying and sympathetic looks where she'd been obliged to walk past groups of muggles before she'd managed to leave Islington, and she'd had to fend off several offers from well-meaning Londoners who only wished to know what was wrong and how they could help her.
Luckily, the house seemed deserted. James and Albus were with their grandmother, and Ginny and Harry were off at work. She had the blessed quiet to cosset her and her wounded pride.
Going to the muggle library was out of the question, she decided. She didn't want to face Lady Hermia and the uncomfortable questions that arose within her whenever she saw her design. She also didn't think she could face the stares and kind questions about why her eyes were so red and her face stricken with tear-tracks.
Instead, she chose to move to the Black Library, choosing a tome at random and settling into a somewhat uncomfortable Louis XVI style settee.
The book she had chosen was rather dull, and seemed to be a treatise on charm regulation from the fourteenth century, in the days before the Wizengamot had been formed and when the Ministry hadn't yet taken shape. The International Confederation of Wizards was only in its infancy, and largely, regulating spell use fell to local Lords and the landed gentry, who at that time, still exercised certain rights of governance over their tenants.
Though it made for dry reading, the subject itself was fascinating, and Hermione found herself absorbed for the next several hours, allowing herself to become so immersed and to vegetate on the material so thoroughly that she didn't notice when Crookshanks climbed up onto her belly and kneaded himself a nest on her jumper. It was only when the front door slammed and Hermione heard the wild screams of James rushing up the stairs and Ginny's imperious voice doing her best to shush Albus' raucous mewling that she took notice of her surroundings.
She thought she saw a blur where Jamie's rust-coloured hair rushed past the open door to the Library, and she gave a small grin to Ginny, who stopped at the door frame and gave her a rather put-upon look.
"Can I help you with that?" Hermione asked, setting down the book and pointing to Albus who was reaching for anything and everything that was within arm's distance.
Ginny chuckled and handed him over, "Be my guest. I need to get changed," the red-haired woman grunted, pulling at her mud-stained jersey. It was the first week of May and the new month had brought with it the showers that were usually reserved for April. "His toys are over there, in a bin. Don't let him get at any of the books... I think we warded them all, but it would be just like one of Harry's sons to manifest his first magic getting past the child-proofing wards,"
Hermione gave her friend a mock salute and a cheeky "Aye, aye, captain," before she settled on the floor with Albus, laying on her stomach and squirming a bit to get comfortable. The baby babbled at her and dripped a long string of saliva from his grinning mouth, with its four, proud teeth coming through, to his hands, which seemed to be covered with the slimy stuff. Hermione grabbed one of his wrists to vanish away the mess before she conjured a little wooden ring for him to gnaw on, charming it against splintering.
"How much do you understand?" She asked, rhetorically as she looked into his wide, clear eyes.
"Not much, I'm guessing."
Albus let out a small burp.
"So, if I told you that your Aunt Hermione had lost her job again today, that wouldn't surprise you in the least, would it?"
He let out a gurgle-like giggle and batted his hand, sticky with spit once more, against Hermione's nose.
"Where do you think I should look next?"
"Auu-rahh"
"You're right. They probably have black-balled me from any more care home positions," she sighed, grabbing a small stuffie of a Abraxan winged horse and making it trot out to bump gently against Albus' hand. "Neiiighhh,"
"Neh."
Hermione grinned at him, "Quite. I don't suppose you could put in a good word for me?" she asked, poking the baby in the ribs so he laughed. "What would be my credentials, anyway?
"Likes to read bed-time stories," she ticked off a finger on her hand, "expert stuffie-talker. Manages to get bath-time done with only five minutes of fuss—all worthy accomplishments," she laughed.
James bounded into the room ahead of his mother, leaping on Hermione's back and lying his head on her shoulder. "Maiooo, play with me—Al, boring,"
"Your brother is not boring, James. He's a baby. A year or so ago you were the same as he was,"
"Nu-uh, I never boring! I play dragons!" He aggressively nuzzled his head against her shoulder, "Maioooo," he whined again, "play dragons! I save you,"
Ginny frowned from where she stood over the three and gently untwined James from around Hermione's neck, setting him on the ground beside her. "I think that's enough, young man. When did you last nap?"
"Nooooo!"
"Mmmhmm. That's what I thought. Excuse us, 'Mione." And with that, she hefted up a squirming, loudly protesting James, and a grinning Albus and hefted them up and out of the room with her, presumably for a bit of a washing up and to be put to bed for an hour or so.
Ginny returned within moments, after having settled the boys into their beds, and grinned upon seeing that Hermione had remained on the floor, turning the magical stuffies over in her hands. They were quite life-like compared to their muggle counterparts.
Hermione levered herself up from the floor, wincing when her back protested a bit, before the two women collapsed on the uncomfortable settee together, sharing a look over their shared bodily gripes.
"Who knew I'd feel this old before thirty?"
"It's worse when you have kids," Ginny said, deadpan. "And what's this I heard you telling Albus about being sacked?" her kind, brown eyes were set on her brunette friend with startling perceptiveness.
The older witch shrugged, looking away and to the floor where the abandoned toy Abraxan laid on its side. "It's as I said. I lost my job." She felt a resurgence of the tears she'd managed to beat back with the boring charms text hours earlier. "They tried to dismiss me... so I quit."
"Oh that old line, huh?" Ginny asked, her mouth twitching a bit.
"Yeah, cliché, I know."
"What are you going to do now? Why did they fire you?" The red-haired woman asked, moving to lean against the arm of the settee and setting her legs on the cushions, crossed ankle, so that she was facing her friend. She squirmed a bit in place against the unyielding wooden arm before she gave in and cast a cushioning charm under her back.
Hermione sneered down at the Abraxan, her face clouding with righteous indignation once more. "I reported on some abuses from the other staff. They said I was tattling and that I wasn't fitting in with the culture there if I would say something about another member of the team behaving inappropriately toward some of our residents... I decided that I didn't want to be a party to that."
She pulled her own feet up onto the couch and turned to mirror her longstanding friend, both of them facing one another. As she did so her jumper pulled against the fabric of the cushion and rode up an inch or two above her trousers.
"I suppose it'll take a bit to find something new at this point," Ginny commented, her voice gentle. Her brown eyes swept over the figure before her, perhaps looking for a clue as to how her friend felt, when they landed at the exposed skin on her abdomen. "'Mione, what's that?"
"What's what?"
Ginny leaned forward and brushed a fingertip against a bit of hyper-pigmented skin that had formed above Hermione's jeans. "This. When did this start?"
Hermione huffed and yanked up her jumper to her ribs, tracing the dark line that was forming a curious bisection of her abdominals, "I don't know when. I don't know what's going on, Ginny— everything feels like it's changing on me, work... the world... my own damn body... I'm not even thirty yet and it feels like my figure's starting to go. I don't know if I just need more exercise or if it's because I can't sleep at night—"
Her red headed friend frowned at her. It was an expression Hermione didn't quite like the looks of. "Why can't you sleep at night?" She asked, eying the dark line critically.
"Nightmares," Hermione said with a small shudder, remembering the most recent one.
"About the war…? Or…?"
Hermione snorted. "No. If that were the case I wouldn't wonder why I was having them. They're just stupid, really. Or even ridiculous. Absurd—"
Ginny's gaze was piercing now and Hermione felt almost skewered by it. "When was the last time you had sex, 'Mione?"
The brunette witch rolled her eyes skyward. "I don't think this sort of thing can be fixed by just getting laid, much as that would be nice right about now,"
Ginny waved her hand in the air dismissively. "I'm not suggesting you go out and get laid," she started, her voice careful but her brown eyes still penetrating. "I think... I mean to say..." She sighed theatrically and muttered to herself furiously, "Bugger it all, Hermione. I'm trying to say that maybe, just maybe, this is an... erm... consequence of getting laid?"
It took a comically long time for Ginny's suggestion to register with her older, and purportedly smarter, friend. Neither of them laughed, however. Particularly not when the knut finally did drop, and Hermione's face crumpled into an expression of mingled horror and panic.
"I can't... That isn't possible! I'm safe—"
"Did you use a potion? It takes a bit of planning to have one prepared in time," Ginny counseled patiently. It was true—like in the muggle world, there were no quick fixes for pregnancy. There was a potion one could take proactively, but it had to be tailored to the witch in question and her unique biology and blood type. The other potion, one taken after the fact, tended to wreak havoc on the system, and was best avoided unless strictly necessary.
Hermione had opted for a muggle method in order to sidestep the monthly visits to an apothecary, where she felt her privacy might have been compromised or invaded.
The IUD she'd received from her doctor in Australia had seemed like a godsend, and in truth, it had been. It'd worked throughout all of her encounters.
All of them, apparently, excepting her night with Snape.
She gulped, knowing her face must have been ashen, and prodded at her belly.
Really, it didn't feel any different. It didn't look much bigger... perhaps a little... not any more than she was used to from her normal cyclical bloating.
"So..." Ginny started again, "when did you have sex last?" she repeated, her voice patient.
"It can't be, Ginny. It just can't—"
"Unless you can give me a good reason why not,"
"I told you! The Muggle device I have is nearly 100% effective—"
Ginny snorted. "Nearly."
"And it was..." Hermione cast back, thinking about the date, "It was five, almost six, months ago. I'd have more symptoms by now! I didn't even get sick once—"
The redheaded witch clucked her tongue sympathetically, "Not everyone does... and you had been complaining about the Easter left-overs. I've never known Mum's cooking to disagree with anyone for any reason..."
"I'm not even showing!"
"When, Hermione?"
The smaller witch gulped. "Christmas..." she muttered, her voice so meek that her friend almost couldn't make it out. "We... it was Christmas,"
Ginny's eyes had grown large with curiosity. "Who?"
To this, Hermione shook her head violently. "I won't say. Don't try—you won't get it out of me," she all but snarled, feeling defensive.
Ginny Potter held up her hands in a placating gesture, "Fine, keep your secrets. I didn't realize it was a sore point."
Hermione sniffed, feeling the sensation that seemed to always portend a strong sob session, "It wasn't. It wasn't until..." she finally felt her face crumple into anguish, "until now."
The world seemed to wash out with her grief. Ginny wasn't there anymore. The library at Grimmauld Place wasn't there anymore. All she was was her own body, and nested within that, cognizant as she was of the new life for the first time, another body. Small. Incomprehensibly small... Yet for the first time she felt the sensation and was able to place what it was exactly. It wasn't unlike the feeling of using a portkey. A hook behind her navel. A small wriggle of movement... she'd thought it had been stomach upset for weeks... months even. She'd chalked it up to a consequence of her terrible, stressful circumstances.
How could she not have noticed? She could feel the subtle thrum of magic beneath her fingertips as she massaged her belly, still mostly flat. How was it that she wasn't showing yet?
Though she did suppose that Fleur Weasley hadn't been visibly pregnant until seven months or so... at the time she remembered thinking the witch lucky... now? She wasn't so sure. Had she had some warning months earlier, it would have been easier to come to terms with.
And the magic she felt below her hand... it was ever so slightly different from her own, though she couldn't put her finger on how.
Had she really been so distracted these last months that she hadn't noticed any change at all?
"—it'll be OK, we'll get you through this, 'Mione. Harry and I are here for you. My mum will be here for you—"
Ginny was still there, she realized with a start, noticing now that she'd collapsed against her friend's shoulder. She must have been talking at length to her through her break down...
"What am I going to do," she moaned, burying her face into the thin cotton of Ginny's shirt.
"Well, first, you're going to have a baby!" Ginny murmured to her, rubbing her back. Her voice was curiously happy, as if it could be possible to feel such an emotion at a time like this. "And anything else, we'll help you figure out along the way—"
"I can't even keep a job, Ginny," Hermione cried, "How am I supposed to support it? I don't know when or where I'll find another one..."
"Perhaps not, but between all of us Weasleys and all of our babies, and all we owe you for being the absolute best aunt to our children, I don't think your baby will want for anything. You can continue to stay here with Harry and me. Don't you worry about not having enough for the two of you. We won't let that happen," the younger witch assured her with absolute conviction.
In spite of herself, Hermione found herself smiling through her tears. She didn't want to be a charity case, no... but this didn't feel like that. She'd been a type of nanny cum aunt to James and Albus for months now, and had done much the same for Ronald and George's children as well. After her first-time taking James months ago, she'd found a certain sort of confidence in her abilities with children where before she'd been running scared of the alien little humans.
Since then, she'd offered her services baby-sitting wherever she had the ability to, and she often found herself parked on a sofa in the Burrow on weekends to offer Arthur and Molly a break from their duties while she doted on little Hugo and Rose, or alternatively, on George's (predictably) rambunctious son, Freddie.
"You're telling me you really didn't have a clue?" Ginny asked, her arm hanging loosely around her friend's shoulders as she poked in the direction of her midsection.
Hermione hung her head and buried her hands through her hair, catching her fingers in snarls of curls as she did so. "No," she mumbled, her voice bleak.
"I mean, you didn't notice when you didn't have a period for..." Ginny ticked back on her fingers, "something like four or five months..."
The brunette witch shrugged, looking helpless. "I haven't had a proper one since I had my birth control put in... I'm always poorly when I'm stressed out and the last few months have been really tough for me,"
Ginny smirked at the back of the girl's head, though not unkindly. "We've noticed,"
"Yeah, well... I'm not used to failing." Hermione snarled a bit defensively.
"Everyone fails at something, sometime, 'Mione." The red-headed witch rubbed her back up and down, patting at her shoulders like she might have for James if he were upset. "When my players can't get the hang of one of my formations, hell, when they fall off their brooms because of the difficulty, I don't change the play: I just insist that they keep at it until they get it down pat. It's how I know I've come up with something superior to what I had them doing—and those are some of my most effective passing configurations—why, the other day, I realized that by having my chasers fly at a slight angle, say thirty degrees, it cut down on the ability for the other team to blagg us, considerably... though I did have to change my beaters around a bit, flying more upright cuts our speed—"
"Ginny, I really have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to Quidditch," her friend said, somewhat dismissively.
The red-headed woman removed the comforting hand from her friend's back and crossed her arms, giving a small scowl. "You might not understand the strategy there, no, but I have no doubt that you understand my meaning. Don't play dumb, you're pants at it. Also, I should probably take a little bit of offense, I've got to talk about my career at some points—"
Hermione glanced up and grabbed the woman's wildly gesticulating hands in her own to settle them. "Alright, alright—I'm sorry, that was really uncalled for. I got your meaning,"
"I know you did," Ginny huffed, her expression cross.
"And I suppose I do understand Quidditch well enough to follow what you're saying, whether it applies to me or not," Hermione admitted with a wry grin. "So, I guess don't avoid using it when you need to,"
"Thank you, for the permission," Ginny said, affecting a snide mien, before she returned her friend's smile and nudged her shoulder with her own. "I'm sure I needed it when talking about my own job in my own home,"
"Point taken. My apologies,"
Ginny waved it away, "No need. So, you say you've not gotten a proper cycle in... how long's it been, anyway?"
Hermione frowned a bit. "Years. Since I went to University in Australia. So... yeah, nearly five years."
"That doesn't sound healthy..."
Hermione shrugged, as if to say it couldn't matter anymore. "Perhaps not. I thought it sounded better than some of the other muggle methods. I could just forget about it, and it worked a treat—"
"Until it didn't."
"Until it didn't," she repeated after the ginger woman. "Yeah." The witch rubbed her stomach a bit, still not believing the position she found herself in.
"Well, I know everything seems very immediate... and you've not given yourself much time to prepare as many women have... but if there's anything I can tell you about pregnancy, it's that you have more time than you think, and this last bit can drag on longer than you can imagine, especially in first timers. So, what's your first step then?"
"I don't even know where to start... do I buy clothes? Bottles? What do babies need... Toys?" Hermione began to rock a bit, developing that far-away look that Ginny knew presaged either some sort of organizational fugue state or a short-term period of extreme, and possibly unproductive, mania.
"I don't think you need to worry about any of that,"
"Don't I?!"
"Not quite yet, no. Your baby won't even look at a toy until he or she is three months old or something—it's pointless to get any for baby until then. As for clothes: I think between all of the Weasleys and Potters, you'll have your pick of hand-me-downs. Same goes for bottles if you're not going to nurse,"
"I don't know..."
Ginny held up her hands, "That's fine. You don't have to know yet."
"I..." Hermione struggled, looking around desperately, "I need a job until then... I'm still not showing, they might still hire me," she wrung her hands. "It'll have to be a muggle job..."
"You still don't think you'll get hired in our world?" Ginny asked with a frown.
The older witch shook her head, her brow creased with worry. "No. I told you what they said at Flourish and Blotts... And I'm still newsworthy enough to warrant attention if I show up around Diagon Alley pregnant. People will want to know who knocked up the female member of the golden trio..."
"Who are you afraid of knowing? The father...?"
Hermione shook her head again, more vehemently this time. "No... I... I'm going to tell him. I don't expect anything, mind, but... he should know. And from me, not from Rita's column in Witch Weekly,"
"The father of your baby reads Witch Weekly?"
At the thought of Snape perusing the vacuous, frivolous rag Hermione finally grinned and giggled a bit, for the first time in what felt like weeks. "Definitely not... but I suppose someone might publish something on it in the Prophet. Anyway, I just don't want that sort of scrutiny on this one..." she said, peering speculatively down at where her belly only barely stuck out in what she'd assumed had been a bit of bloating.
"I wouldn't either," Ginny said. "Both of my pregnancies were a bit nightmarish like that. Eventually, Harry and I had to just agree to being photographed at certain points so we could cut deals that prohibited them sending the paparazzi after us,"
"I thought I still saw some nonsense in The Moon," Hermione reminded her, a bit doubtfully.
"Yeah, well, I wasn't about to cut a deal with them," Ginny spat, her face clouding with remembrance, "worse than Skeeter, they are. You know with James they tried to say they found a source claiming I'd been up the duff during the war and that I got rid of it so I could get with Harry?" she snarled. Her cheeks were reddened with rage. "I would never—"
Hermione squeezed her fingers between her own, "We all know that, Gin. Harry definitely knows that."
"We had to sue for libel!"
"All the more reason for me to avoid publicity, don't you think?"
The redheaded woman nodded with determination. "Definitely... So, first a job..."
Hermione nodded back, her own face just as resolute. "Any job."
"You can say whatever you want
You can say whatever you want (yeah)
You can say whatever you want
Boy, what kinda pill are you on?
Heard you think I'm hurt, hurt
I promise I'm not hurt, hurt
I promise I'm not—"
"Hurt" (reprise) – Lost Kings ft. DeathbyRomy
A/N: I realize that Hermione, in a certain light, could be seen as being guilty of doing the same thing Gerald Rudd did, in reporting on her co-workers. It is a question of one's morals and ethics whether you consider her to be a hypocrite or not. In my mind, she was reporting actual abuses of the elderly as she witnessed it personally, and was only doing it in order to protect their individual interests, given that she has a duty of care. Some might quibble with that, and see it as more of the same—I'm sure a case could be made. Of course, Gerald didn't witness what Hermione said first-hand: she said it in confidence to Harry, and Gerald's interpretation of her intent was specious at best (i.e. she wasn't yelling epithets at a muggleborn or house-elf or anything as Digby, Geeta, and Marian were doing by being nasty to the elders left in their care).