Down on the second floor a minute later, Hermione and Tonks walked into the bedroom the Weasleys had all been cleaning all morning.
It still looked incredibly grimy and dirty, just wet now from where they'd been trying to clean with water and soap. Unable to stand the gross feeling it gave her, Hermione pulled out her wand and waved it around the room, saying, "Scourgify."
By the time anyone in the room realized what was happening, and specifically Mrs Weasley realized what was happening, Hermione was already done and sticking her wand back in her pocket, a decade's worth of grime gone in five seconds, and the room looking two hundred percent better because of it.
"Hermione Granger!" exclaimed Mrs Weasley in shock and outrage. "You are underage! You can't use magic!"
The rest of the Weasleys were all too shocked at how much better the room looked in just five seconds compared to their several hours of work, to say anything at all.
"Oops," replied Hermione dryly with absolutely zero remorse, sitting down next to Tonks on the now mostly clean bed. It still needed the vacuum cleaner charm ran over it before she at least would be willing to sleep in it, but it was at least clean enough to sit down on to eat lunch.
Glaring at the muggleborn, but unable to perform any countercharm to bring all the dirt and grime back so it could be cleaned 'properly', Mrs Weasley began passing out the sandwiches she had brought up from the kitchen, which promptly brought everyone else out of their shock at the rapidly improved state of the room. The twins quickly greeted Hermione cheerfully, while Ron merely glared at her, still clearly not having forgiven her for siding with Harry the year before.
~HP~
Once lunch had been going on long enough, Mrs Weasley ordered them all back to work.
Before heading back down to the kitchen with the empty dishes, she handed Hermione a bucket of soapy water and a cloth and said sweetly, "If you can wipe down the curtains, dear…."
But Hermione simply pulled her wand back out of her pocket, refusing to touch the bucket and cloth Mrs Weasley was holding. And turning without a word to the redhead, she walked over to the curtains and casting the charm, began running the tip of her wand over them like a vacuum cleaner, removing all the dirt and grime and dust and mold that Scourgify hadn't got on her quick pass over when she'd first entered the room.
No sooner had she started syphoning the filth out from the curtains and making them look practically brand new, Mrs Weasley shouted, "No magic, young woman! You are underaged, and not allowed to perform magic outside of school!"
Hermione turned, wand held up in front of her. "Then kick me out — I'd much rather be at home with my parents than in this bloody dump, anyway. I didn't ask to be kidnapped and brought here, in case you conveniently forgot, so if I am going to have to be your slave for the summer and clean this squalor that you failed to clean before inviting a bunch of 'children' to live in, I'm bloody well going to do it by magic. You are not my mother, and not my legal guardian by any laws recognized by the British police or courts, so you have no authority over me. So either let me get back to doing what you should have been doing this whole time, or let me go back home where I'd much rather be anyway."
Ron and Ginny stared at her in disbelief, the twins looked like they were holding back from cheering and letting out whoops of joy, Sirius looked at her in a mixture of surprise and pride, and Tonks merely smirked, having definitely found her new bff.
But Mrs Weasley looked like she'd just been physically slapped, hard.
She sputtered in outrage for several seconds, before finally managing to get out, "How dare you speak to me like that, young woman! I offer to let you come here and be part of the fight against You-Know-Who, feed you, and give you somewhere to live, and this is how you repay me!?"
"I dare, because you have no authority over me no matter how much you try to act like it. You never offered me anything, you demanded I come when I specifically told you I didn't want to. When we got here, you made it clear you aren't going to let me into the Order that's actually fighting against Voldemort — that's his name, or at least the one everyone still remembers, so you might as well get used to it and stop being such a sniveling coward about a name — so unless someone cares to enlighten me on how I'm wrong, you aren't going to let me be a part of the fight against Voldemort despite the fact that Harry and I have done more to stop Voldemort's return since his failed attempt to kill baby Harry than any of you adults have. And once again, you aren't 'feeding me and giving me somewhere to live' when you forced me to come here against my will — you're simply not violating the basic human rights prisoners are universally agreed to have by the Geneva Convention and similar international agreements."
Once again, everyone was left staring at Hermione, most in some part for not even completely understanding everything she had said, only Tonks having understood the Geneva Convention reference as none of the purely magical people in the room had ever heard of it before. But they were also staring at her for so resolutely standing up to the Matriarch, and refusing to cower. If they were named Sirius, Tonks, or the twins, that is — Ron and Ginny looked like they'd never heard such vile disrespect for their perfect mum in all their lives. And the Matriarch herself simply looked like her brain had stopped working altogether at being told 'no'.
After several seconds of everyone just staring at her, especially Mrs Weasley, Hermione knew she had her answer, and turned back to the curtains and began cleaning them with her wand again, letting everyone behind her do whatever they pleased. She wasn't going to be allowed to go back home like she'd've preferred, so she was going to make her cell for the summer at least worth living in.
Half a minute later, she finally heard everyone else start getting to work again, followed very quickly by Mrs Weasley shouting, "No! Absolutely not! I absolutely forbid it!"
Hermione turned to see the Matriarch glaring at the twins, both of whom had their wands out about to start cleaning the dressers on the other side of the room. Knowing the twins weren't pushovers, and were of-age now, Hermione paused her own cleaning to watch the fireworks.
"We're of age! We're allowed to do magic now!" shouted the one she was pretty sure was Fred.
"You can't stop us from doing magic!" bellowed George at the same time.
So before a full on row could start, Sirius quietly said, "They're right Molly — they are of age, which means they can legally perform magic if they want to."
Glaring at everyone she could, Mrs Weasley finally turned and stormed out of the room without a word, knowing she had lost but unwilling to admit it. Silence reigned for several seconds, before Hermione turned back to the curtains and began cleaning again, which spurred everyone else into action as well.
Within fifteen minutes, all the surface grime was gone, and the room looked new again for the first time in over a decade. Following Tonks' lead, they then all began tackling the enchanted and dark objects lurking in the room, giving everything dangerous to Tonks to take to the aurors office, and throwing away all the normal junk collected over the years. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, Hermione noticed that while she, the twins, Sirius, and Tonks were all using magic, Ron and Ginny still weren't, apparently either too scared of their mother to dare cross her wishes, or else too enamored by her to do anything other than what she wanted, even if it was much harder and completely stupid.
~HP~
Mrs Weasley didn't return until she came up to call them all down to supper, clearly astounded at how much progress they had made based on the look on her face when she entered the bedroom they were almost done with.
"This is the second room you've cleaned today?!" she said in disbelief as she looked around.
"Third — amazing what you can do when you use your God-given skills of being a witch and wizard," replied Hermione dryly.
As the twins snickered behind her, Mrs Weasley first gaped at hearing that they were on their third room that afternoon alone when it had been taking two days or more per single room previously, before hardening at Hermione's snark about using magic.
"Everyone's here and it's suppertime, you can all come down now," she growled after a few seconds, before turning and stalking back out of the room.
Everyone quickly followed after her, happy to finally be released from their work, even if it had gone a lot better and quicker since Hermione had stepped up and dared to used magic.
Supper was the typical loud affair it was with seven redheads and another dozen adults or so, some she knew and some she didn't, but Hermione mostly spent her time talking with Lupin and Tonks, catching up with what the werewolf had been doing since he'd taught them two years earlier, and learning more about Harry's godcousin, her new best friend at Grimmauld Place.
But eventually supper wrapped up, and Dumbledore took Hermione to the side.
"I have already informed Mister Weasley of this" — Hermione assumed the headmaster meant Ronald, not Arthur — "but due to the high risk of owls being captured and letters going astray due to the war we are now in, you cannot write about what is going on here or where here is, or anything you may hear about the war against Voldemort, and all letters must be read over by one of the adults before you can send them. I know you want to keep Harry informed, but I'm sure you understand the necessity of these new measures — we can't have anything important falling into the wrong hands at a time like this."
Hermione simply nodded and replied, "Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir," knowing it didn't matter in the least whether she understood, or agreed, or not, just as it didn't matter whether she even wanted to be there in the first place — she had no choice, and the adults would force whatever they thought best without any regards to anyone else's beliefs on the matter, no matter how intelligent or well-informed.
She also immediately began thinking of how she could get around the rule and tell her boyfriend everything he needed to hear to not go insane or become clinically depressed, two things none of the adults in the wizarding world in positions of authority over Harry ever seemed to have heard of.