Disclaimer: I own nothing but a beat up car, this chapter was revised/updated on 16 Feb 2020.
30 August 1999
The late August sun was setting beyond the Forbidden Forest, burning like embers as the day died to become night. Hermione Granger sat and watched from the Astronomy Tower, alone save for the owls starting to hunt and the bats leaving their roost.
She was feeling pensive, more so than any soon-to-be-20 year old witch should be, on a summer evening. Despite the feast waiting many floors below her in the Great Hall and her stomach that gurgled with hunger, she couldn't quite tear herself away from the setting sun just yet.
If asked to describe Hermione Granger many of her friends would, without pause, rattle off the defining characteristics of a Gryffindor verbatim. Brave, daring, loyal and adventurous they'd tell you with proud heads held high, for many of her friends were sorted to Gryffindor too.
If pressed further, or asked for evidence of these traits, they'd tell you of her role in the war. How she'd selflessly put Harry Potter, the Greater Good and the wizarding world ahead of her own needs and fought tirelessly for the cause and against the Death Eaters.
Not a single Daily Prophet during the past 15 months had landed on a breakfast table without at least one article singing the praises of the brightest witch of her age. Somehow Skeeter and her associates managed to constantly find new ways to spin her story and accomplishments and the wizarding public lapped it up.
Once the smog of the charms thrown in battle had settled through the halls of Hogwarts Hermione had joined arms with her fellow students, her teachers and fellow citizens to rebuild the school and home of so many to its former glory.
If you'd asked Hermione Granger to describe herself she'd have told you she was, without a doubt, bloody exhausted.
In the space of 15 hectic months everything Hermione had worked for and wanted for 6 long years had fallen into place; the war had reached a chaotic conclusion and the aftermath was sudden. Kingsley Shacklebolt didn't pause before taking his rightful place as Minister of Magic and initiating the trials of the surviving Death Eaters before the last memorial service for the fallen had finished.
Kingsley had assured Hermione many a time that her presence wasn't necessary at each and every trial of the surviving Death Eaters and that the memories she provided the Wizengamot were more than sufficient; she, however, disagreed. If her memories were to be used as evidence then it was her intent to attend the court in support of them.
"I disagree with testifying by memory alone, Kingsley, I'm sorry but I can't help it," she'd argued. "How can a memory sufficiently share to the Wizengamot the nuances, the pain and the emotional impact of a situation? My thoughts, my feelings, my interpretation isn't shared in a memory - just the moment, bare and ready for one's own conclusions. I should be there to give context and conviction to what they see before them".
It took Harry agreeing with her for Kingsley and Arthur to relent. When he too argued that he wanted to support his memories, knowing how well things could be misinterpreted, the pair accepted that this battle they fought was a losing one. Harry Potter, never one to forget a debt owed, particularly insisted he be given the chance to support Narcissa Malfoy in her trial and, after slight protest, even spoke to Rita Skeeter about the pivotal role she played in the demise of Voldemort in an effort to sway public opinion.
Ron, unlike his friends, chose to hand over the vials of his memories and retire to the Burrow, not wanting to relive the trauma of the war and decisions he'd made. When Hermione had asked, and he knew she would, he'd given her honesty. "I have to live with my choices, Hermione, but I don't have to relive them every damn day".
Instead Ron had chosen to spend the aftermath in the warm embrace of the remaining Weasleys, nursing the wounds that the Death Eaters had wrought upon them. The Weasley family needed to heal and their losses were still too new. Hermione struggled to find her place in the family, she wanted to mourn with them, feeling the loss of Fred sorely but whenever she went to the burrow she found herself on the edge looking in at a tight unit with no space for her.
Her war-time romance with Ron had rapidly fizzled into nothing in the weeks after the final battle. It appeared that, without the threat of Death Eaters busting through the tent pegs ay any given moment, their frantic need for each other was non-existent. They parted mutually and with relief, though there were a few awkward glances in the first weeks after. The only person truly upset with their split had been Molly who'd always hoped for another daughter in Hermione.
Percy, like Hermione, had also struggled greatly to define his place in the Weasley Family and it was he who approached the Astronomy Tower that evening looking to round her up for the meal awaiting them.
"Thought I'd find you up here," he said as he leant his forearms on the balustrade beside her.
"Mmm," she replied. "Does it make sense that I'm not quite ready for the next phase? Tomorrow the returning and new students come back, we've finished here, we finished weeks ago really… It all changes again tomorrow and I just want to savour it".
"I'm not sure you're savouring the right thing, but I know what you mean. This time was special, Hermione; giving Hogwarts back to the next generation, but we'll always have it".
"Alright for you to say, Perce. You're staying on-"
She smirked as he immediately looked uncomfortable for the first time that evening, "you're not supposed to know that yet," he told her haughtily. "Minerva's announcing it this evening".
"Ah, well a portrait told me. Congratulations Professor Weasley, I'm sure you'll make History of Magic..."
"As dull as ever?" He replied with a wry laugh.
"Well, it can't get worse than it's been!" She told him as they laughed together.
He was a different man than the one she'd known mere months ago when she'd still find him sobbing in the dark of the Great Hall, begging Merlin to tell him why Fred had been taken and not him, the one who didn't belong.
He'd thrown himself into the rebuilding of Hogwarts instead, supporting Professor "what have I told you, Percy, call me Minerva" McGonagall in her quest to reopen the school before the decade, and century, was out.
The pair of them, and so many others, had found out just how therapeutic it could be to rebuild the building that had been destroyed. Over the past year if she wasn't buried under beaurocracy in the bowels of the ministry, then Hermione was, most likely, at Hogwarts. She'd discovered very quickly how cathartic she found it, after a day in the dock, to return to the beloved castle and be a part of the slow effort to repair the damage done.
Each and every night for the past year she'd gone to bed tired and barely able to scourgify herself before she fell to the bed, sometimes not even getting beneath the covers before she slept. She'd awake with a satisfied ache in her muscles that grew more defined by the day, magical manual labour was proving to be an incredibly effective way to chase the realities of the aftermath away.
On the 9th May, a week after the first stoic and dignified mourning of the Battle of Hogwarts, Minerva had summoned the workers to the Great Hall for the first feast in the walls of the newly restored Great Hall. Only one of the long tables was laden with the impressive display of food, made by the house elves who'd refused to abandon the castle. Informal and plentiful the eclectic team of students, teachers, parents and the wizarding public were able to relax for the first time in a fortnight, though they were helped along by the jugs of Elven wine and butterbeer.
Minerva had waited for the right moment to make her announcement and, once their bellies were full and their hearts much lighter, she stood to address the crowd. "This news, that I'm so incredibly proud to announce tonight, won't come as a surprise to many but nevertheless it's time to declare it to the world: Hogwarts will reopen and welcome students to her halls once more on 1 September 1999.
This couldn't have been achieved without each and every one of you. We've worked so hard together to put the past behind us and rebuild a school for the future. Each and every one of you will always have a place at Hogwarts should you need it".
The ministry, understandably, were impatient to draw a line in the uncertainty and terror that had surrounded the wizarding world through the past years. And so, as quickly as the trials began, they came to a close. Over a mere 15 months the Death Eaters were tried and punished swiftly and mercilessly with sentences that we deemed harsh by a quiet few but fair by a vocal many.
The final trials coincided with the last brick being put back in place at Hogwarts and a plaque installed in the Great Hall in tribute to the many who'd fallen in the defence of the school and the children within, including Professors Burbage, Snape and Dumbledore.
Hermione, like Percy, had also been offered a role at Hogwarts by Minerva in, of all places, the library. Irma Pince, having spent the past thirty years tirelessly policing the stacks, had been greatly effected by the war and felt a need to contribute more to improve the literacy of wizarding Britain before they attended Hogwarts. To do this to the best of her ability she wanted to step back to a part time role to better dedicate her time to her new cause. Both Irma and Minerva's first choice for a replacement steward of the tomes had been Hermione, who'd shown such care in restoring the magical books of Hogwarts.
Naturally Hermione was drawn to the job, it was a perfect fit for her and a great opportunity to not only shape the young minds coming through the doors tomorrow morning but to help her work out her next steps. She worried though that she'd settle too easily into the rhythms of the school and that she hadn't fully reconciled her own experiences of the war yet.
Kingsley, as Minister, had also offered her a job in the department of magical law enforcement but every time she thought about the job, thought about the idea of losing herself in paperwork and getting beaten down by the repeated monotony of bureaucracy, it scared her and every since the offer she'd looked for any chance to turn it down.
Working so closely with him it was hard not to see Percy Weasley's time at the ministry as a cautionary tale and she knew all too well how difficult she would find trying to change the system from within should she want to.
The reality was that Hermione was bloody exhausted and, now that she'd stopped burying herself in the trials and construction she'd busied herself with so keenly, she had to face up to the thing she'd spent the past few years avoiding.
It had been so easy to avoid the reality of her situation when she could keep herself busy. When she was too tired to think at the end of the day she could avoid it. When she had been running through the woods with Death Eaters on her tail there was no time to dwell.
But for the past week a sense of dread had been bubbling like a cauldron in the small of her stomach and the simmer was not abating, in fact she felt it could boil over any day.
As she descended the stairs of the tower, following Percy towards the smell of a freshly cooked supper, she knew that the pit of dread could only mean one thing. The next phase was about to begin and it was time to face up to the single hardest decision of her life. It was time for her to take responsibility, time to rise to a new challenge and time to fight her next battle.
It was time for Hermione Granger to find her parents.
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