Author's Note: Sorry for delay on this one, real life went BOOM on me the last two weeks. This chapter is a bit of a guilty pleasure, I always wanted to know how the 2000s would affect the wizarding world, what with cell phones and such. Have to say, if it wasn't obvious, that "Cursed Child" isn't taken as canon in this story, though I am taking inspiration from some of the events in the play.

Enjoy and share your thoughts! Every review is a bit of happy news ^^

Chapter 3

Ginny stayed the night; and despite her semi accusation that I was turning into an alcoholic, she'd brought a bottle of firewhiskey along too.

We hadn't done sleepovers since...well, ever really. Unless you counted the times I was at her family home as a child, or Grimauld. We'd sort of skipped the whole crazy 20s fun which most university students enjoy in the Muggle world.

She'd moved in with Harry and I with Ron almost immediately after graduating.

Now, in my thirties, I had my own flat for the first time and an honest to god pajama party with my best friend.

We discussed this topic and that for a while, awkwardly trying to find our way into comfortable conversation again after so long. I tried to ask about Ginny's life at home and the kids, but it became apparent she was completely uninterested in discussing it.

"It's all I do!" she said between drinks, "Wash this, wash that, change their bedsheets, cook and all I get as thanks is an exhausted husband in the evening and kids who demand more. Tell me about you, your work."

I told her it wasn't much and that the rounds at night were as boring as they sounded. She was quite disappointed, but when I mentioned the West Wing, she jumped on the mystery like a boey in the ocean.

"How queer!" she exclaimed, somewhat intoxicated already, as we lay in my bed, "Whatd'you reckon it could be?"

"Not a single clue. I mean, I guess it must be some sort of experiment? Or research? I think Dilys tried to tell me to go have a look."

"Who?"

"One of the Headmaster's Portraits in McGonagall's office. She whispered that I should go see the West Wing, cause it was beautiful and some house-elf architects had recently built something in there."

"Huh, weirder and weirder…"

"Yeah."

"How did she know?"

"What?"

"Dilys, how did she know something was built?"

I shrugged, "Must have heard of it? I dunno...oh! Ginny you're a genius!"

The redhead down her glass of firewhiskey and grinned, "Well, yes, obviously."

"Dilys must have a painting in St-Mungo's, possibly even more than one. It's quite probable that at least one of them is in the West Wing. But she can't just tell me what's in there. At least she didn't seem able to just say it out loud."

"No? That's strange. I don't think she's bound to any rules of St-Mungo's, only to the Headmaster of Hogwarts. So if she isn't saying it…"

"Then McGonagall is the one preventing her!" I said, feeling pieces of the puzzle falling together, and yet leaving bigger questions open. "What could be in St-Mungo's which McGonagall doesn't want us to know about?"

"Beats me," she said between yawns, "I need to sleep, Hermione."

I nodded, feeling exhausted as well. It was odd to sleep in my new upgraded home, even odder to have someone in bed with me, but it turned out to be one of the best night sleep I had had in a long time.

Ginny left bright and early to get back to her family. Harry, it turned out, had taken a half day off from work just so she could come visit me. Hugging my friend goodbye, I began to seriously question my decision making over the past few months. What could have possibly led me to believe Ginny would take Ron's side?

I was made to promise to keep my flat clean, something which I truly intended to follow through.

Having woken up with Ginny, much earlier than my usual schedule, and feeling quite well rested, I decided to hit Muggle London for some much required shopping. Checking on my wares in the new cupboards and fridge I wasn't surprised to find that my friend had stocked me up on food as well. Still, there were a few snacks and spices missing which you just couldn't get in the wizarding world.

It had been a long while since I dressed in jeans and t-shirt and for the first few hours of traveling my clothes felt constraining and rough against my skin. Having lost my only real connections to the Muggle world, I had rarely visited or kept up with its socio-political changes since the war. Smartphones, for example, was something that had quite passed me by. But more and more I had begun to see them in everyone's hands, their eyes glued to the screen.

This time was worse than any before. Every fifth person I saw was either on the phone, plugged in via headset or typing on the screen at lightning speed. My curiosity peaked, I decided to enter the closest telephone shop and have a look at the flat devices for myself.

"Good morning, Ma'am, can I help you with anything today?" a middle aged man, dressed in slacks and a red company t shirt displaying slogan and logo said as she approached me.

"Yes, erm...my old…Nokia? Broke down? So well, you see...I'm not really up to date with the new... smartphones, is it?"

The man's absurdly white smile broadened, "Of course! I'd be happy to show you around some of the new models we've received, just a couple of months ago actually. Right this way. Were you interested in a phone or tablet?"

"Both?" I answered, unsure what the difference was.

The clerk took me to a large white table with a dozen devices plugged in, displayed on small plastic pedestals. He proceeded to lift one after the other, explaining this and that, half of which I did not understand at first. I tried to ask questions which did not make me appear like I had just stepped out of the stone age but, to be honest, it did feel like that.

The more the man spoke, the more I began to regret having lost touch with reality. These phones were incredible, the progress made with the internet...data usage reaching gigabytes, over wireless...I was flabbergasted. Search engines having indexed millions of pages, everything at your fingertips.

It was no wonder everyone was glued to this thing, it was better than magic.

When asked if I would be interested in a contract with new phone model, I couldn't refuse. I had no idea if the phone would work in the magical world, but I couldn't pass on the opportunity to own such a device. I selected a one year contract after being advised that the technology was advancing so quickly, that a new model with nearly twice as much capabilities as the current one would likely come out once a year.

Such a foreign concept to the wizards, leaps of advancement every year. Their rate was more along the lines of one advancement every other century. And still they considered themselves better than Muggles.

I returned home a few hours later, with a brand new laptop, a tablet and a smartphone. Food and spices completely forgotten. Checking the clock, I decided to do the reasonable thing and have a nap before my shift began. Tech check would have to wait.

That night, and every night of the following weeks, I began plotting my sneaking into the West Wing. I also became aware of a few strange behaviours and details of the staff which I had not taken note of so far. It was a mark of how distracted I had been the past few weeks, honestly, as it now appeared glaringly obvious.

The West Wing was being guarded, monitored, with a different healer taking up shift exactly every four hours. Other than Healer Tuckett, I saw five other such guards, all of them more or less young and all wearing the trainee badge. This fact confused me at first, if whoever or whatever was kept in the West Wing was so important, why assign trainees to protect it?

Next to this project, I got in contact with Arthur Weasley and begged for his help with my newly bought technologies. Knockturn Alley wasn't as swimming with magical energies as Hogwarts was, so the devices did manage to start, but they shut down at random times and fizzed about at odd hours of the night. If my ex father-in-law had any qualms about helping me, they were immediately forgotten when I showed him the smartphone.

"Incredible! Unbelieveable, simply...fabulous! And you say it works wirefree?"

"Wireless, yes."

"And through this wireless signal, it catches the internets?"

I smiled and tucked my legs under me, "It accesses the internet via the telecommunication network, by reaching to the nearest tower, which sends the signal in space, and then redirects it."

"Space! Truly the Muggles have gotten one up on us this time."

Though fascinated, Mr Weasley couldn't manage to make the devices work as intended. It became obvious that he also did not quite understand what intended would look like. And so we scheduled a trip to London for the following Sunday.

It turned out to be an exhausting, hilarious, and extremely informative day for both of us. Ginny had volunteered to accompany us, but was kept home last minute due to Albus falling ill. Her company would have been welcomed, but in the end I realized it was better she not be around. Explaining everything to one person who had true passion for the topic, yet was somewhat clueless, was exhausting enough. I knew Ginny and her natural curiosity would have led her to ask a hundred thousand question, but her lack of real interest would have made the answers moot.

Unfortunately Mr Weasley's conclusion wasn't one I was very happy with, "I'm afraid a solution to this problem would take more than some spare time project, Hermione. This could be someone's career, bringing truly useful and advanced Muggle technologies to the Wizarding World. Can you imagine? Now need for owls, books...it'd ruin economies…"

"And help people stay connected!" I defended.

He nodded, but I could see that his initial excitement had been lost, he now looked at the phone in his hand with a hint of disdain in his expression, "I'm not sure we're ready for this."

"Well, I'm not about to go scream about it on top of rooftops. But I really would like have to have it for personal use."

We had returned to Diagon Alley and he handed me the device, "I heard of technology advanced wizards in Japan, there are so many people there, the magical centers crept over the Muggle ones ages ago. They had to find some kind of way to make it work, maybe try exploring that avenue."

I thanked him for his help and went home somewhat disappointed. It was strange really, I had lived my entire life without this technology, so there was no reason to miss it. Yet I felt absolutely determined to make them work. Maybe I just clung to the projects as distraction.

Slowly but surely, Christmas was approaching and a decision had to be made. To spend the holidays alone and miserable, or to join the Weasleys and potentially experience even more misery. Ginny, who now visited every other week, was hell bent on forcing me to attend. She had also become my co-conspirator regarding the West Wing and was becoming highly fed up with my stalling.

"You should just barge in! What are they going to do, really?"

"Arrest me?"

Ginny scoffed, "I doubt it. It can't be a legal thing, if it were there would be Aurors instead of Healers roaming the place."

"Hmm...maybe," I said, huffing as my laptop shut down again for the fifth time that hour. It always acted up whenever an extra witch or wizard was in the vicinity.

"Did you make Luna's phone work in the end?" Ginny asked, leaning over my shoulder to look at the machine.

I had messaged the globetrotter not long after my conversation with Ginny's father, knowing that she was in Japan and hoping to get her opinion on the matter. She had sent me an overly joyous and long letter back, claiming to be absolutely delighted to share with me parts of her travels. Among the feet of parchment scribbled with news of rare Pigmy Puffs, blue thestrals and the still elusive water spirit, she actually did claim that Wizarding Japan had function technology in their homes.

"It's not as much as you'd expect to see in Muggle homes, mind you. But they've got electricity here, cell phones and sometimes even computers. At least one of those per household, except maybe for those who live in the few traditional wizarding communities. I'm sending you one of the latest smartphones released here, it's claimed to be 100% wizarding world compatible by their makers. I'm afraid it's in Japanese however, but I'm sure you'll find a way to change that.

Oh did I mention, I'm getting married!"

The last part was definitely the weirdest thing Luna could ever have written, and Ginny had threatened to hang me if I didn't reply immediately to ask more details about who Luna was marrying. We half expected it to be a woman.

I picked up the Japanese smartphone, "Sort of. I was planning another trip to London to get it looked at, but I just haven't had the time."

"But it works?"

I turned on the phone and handed it to her, "Yes, some of the commands and such I know from my English device. But it just gives me a headache to see the symbols after a while."

Ginny swiped her fingers over the glass screen, clicking this and that, until the camera turned on and she gasped, "You can take pictures with it!? But it's so small! Where do the photos come out?"

"They don't," I said and smiled as Ginny proceeded to snap a series of pictures, "You can go to a machine in a Muggle shop and get them printed though, but they don't move or anything."

"Duh, I know that part. But this is nice...hey! Did you think about using it to document St-Mungo's? You could take pictures of the halls, the guards, it would help us plan the break in."

I wrinkled my nose at the memory of the Gringotts Bank breakin, my skin itched just thinking about the cursed coins, "Yeah, maybe."

Not accepting anything but a yes ma'am as an answer, I slipped the phone in my robes and promised to snap at least a few pictures the following night.

"And Hermione," Ginny said before she left later that day, "Get a job, one that pays!"

I waved my hand at her, shooing the person and the comment. She was right, but I still had no idea what I wanted to do. Going back to the Ministry seemed like a step in the wrong direction, but money would run out soon. I had been advised that November would mark the end of my sick leave compensation. I had some money saved up, obviously, but even if I was careful, early next spring I'd need a source of income.

St-Mungo's had offered me a more permanent position, more out of pity I figured, but I had yet to return to them about it. McGonagall warned me that she would need to hire new teachers soon, and it was my last chance this year to take her up on the position.

I pushed the decision away from my mind, focusing instead of the shift ahead and my nightly rounds. I had not seen Hannah in a few weeks and I was beginning to worry about the woman, even though Neville assured me that she was fine and still working.

"Probably just busy, your schedules might not coincide," he'd told me during our last lunch together.

There was no reason for Neville to lie to me, but still something in his answer made me uneasy. With somewhat of a guilty conscience, I decided to skip my rounds that night and wait for Hannah to show up at the cafeteria. Nurse and Healer came and went, never any of the guards I noted to myself as I drank my tea, but at three in the morning there was still no sign of the Hufflepuff.

Somewhat frustrated, I decided to go roam the corridors and hunt her down. Unfortunately the hospital was bloody huge, and the only hint I had of her potential whereabouts was her relation to the West Wing.

Well, I thought, Ginny wanted pictures anyways.

I headed down the dark corridors, meeting a few people along the way and check over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't followed. Silly really, I couldn't really imagine that anyone here was out to get me, but still…

When I heard Hannah's voice echoing down from the direction of the West Wing I smirked, gotcha!

But my feeling of success quickly turned to worry when I realized she sounded angry and panicked. I slowed my footsteps and snuck to the corner of the corridor leading to the Wing's entrance. I held my breath and listened.

"It's not right! People need to know, you can't keep this a secret any longer!"

A man answered her, his voice familiar though I couldn't quite recognise it, "Mrs Longbottom, if you are unable to fulfil your duties as a Healer, perhaps I should have a word with St-Mungo's board of directors and have your application revisited."

"No, no please. It's just...this is so wrong."

"If there is nothing else, I'd like to ask you to take an early leave today. Go home, rest, think about your future. We will speak again tomorrow."

There was a sniffle and rustle of robes, footsteps coming closer. I quickly cast a silent notice-me-not spell and hugged the wall as tightly as I could. Luckily Hannah made a right turn as she came down the corridor, heading towards the South Wing of the hospital where her parents-in-law were kept.

I was about to walk away when another man's voice spoke up, "Does she need to be dealt with?"

My blood ran cold. With shaking fingers I reached into my pockets and palmed the smartphone. Lowering the brightness and turning on the camera, no flash, I edged the camera lense over the corner and thumbed the button half a dozen time.

"Let's see, give her another chance. It's unfortunate that a Hogwart student was assigned to this case," the first man replied.

"A bureaucratic issue, it's been dealt with at the source."

"It better had. I'm getting tired of obliviating people."

Footsteps. Returning the phone to my pockets I lept away from the wall and sprinted down the corridor as fast as my feet would take me and did not stop until I had reached the Floo Network room, thrown in the powder, and landed in Knockturn alley.