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It was nice, she supposed, waking up to a warm bed. Until she realised exactly what that source of heat was, and attempted to smother herself back to sleep or death, either or.
What had she done?
In a flash, Hermione remembered the night before.
Yesterday had stretched for months in her head. The last week had been a blur. But now lying warm in bed with the sun streaming through her window, Hermione wondered what had changed.
It was a new day.
She would take each moment as it came.
And she was not alone.
Gently she rolled Dennis over and made her way to the bathroom. Hearing him begin to stir, she turned the shower on loudly, quickly locking the door and hopping in.
Let him have enough time to get his bearings. Back to normal. Well, back to busy work at least. Twisting off the rattling shower head, she threw on the hotels cheap bathrobe and ran a towel through her now culled locks.
She emerged with a smile.
"Coffee? Bathrooms free."
Dennis nodded, fumbling the word yep awkwardly, too busy standing before a woman in a bathrobe, still wet beneath.
Hermione tried not to blush, and heard him breathe a sigh of relief as she turned her back on him and started making coffee, allowing him to jump from the bed with her eyes firmly centred on the busy task of instant coffee sachets and the plastic muggle kettle, and not his naked walk to the bathroom.
As soon as the pipes signalled, Hermione rushed to her beaded bag her arm shoulder deep among the invisible depths, searching for the clothes she knew she had there. She tried to bring to mind the specific muggle clothing she needed, but there was no denying that the process was easier with a summoning charm.
The pipes groaned once more and the shower fell silent. Hermione rummaged desperately for thirty silent seconds, then moved back to the now steaming kettle, her back to the room once more.
"Milk?"
Dennis nodded, then bent about collecting his cloths from the floor, clutching tightly at the towel around his waist.
"When you get a minute, can you summon me some muggle clothes from out of my beaded bag there?" She handed him a coffee, trying not to look at his torso as he dumped his clothes on the bed, giving her a grin. He bounded to the bag, pulling on his jeans and retrieving his wand from their pocket
Your hero on his big adventure, your knight with a distinct lack of armour.
"Accio Muggle clothes!"
His voice rang out like a student vying to show off to a professor and Hermione couldn't help but scowl as she was hit with a wave of every piece of muggle clothing she'd ever owned.
"Shit! Sorry.." Dennis appeared mortified and Hermione tried to summon a patient and encouraging smile.
"I suppose I appreciate your enthusiasm." Cringing at the implications inherent in such a remark, Hermione began to babble.
"So today I need you to stay with Ginny so she can contact me."
"Oh."
Hermione turned to the bed now covered in clothes, shifting aside a jacket shed worn back in her third yea, and searching for a pair of jeans. There. One of her mum's friends had left them off at the practice for Hermione, a hand me down gift the woman's daughter hadn't wanted. She'd kept asking about Hermione's A Levels and how she was going. Hermione tugged them on under her bathrobe, with her back turned towards Dennis.
As she turned around once more, she noticed Dennis' eyes drifting towards the now prominent gape in her robe. Dennis coughed then asked with apparent nonchalance, "What will you be doing?"
Again Hermione smiled and shrugged, making sure her robe was held more securely and groping about on the bed for a top.
While he stood there, uselessly, a wand hanging by his side.
Honestly.
She felt her fist close around an old tshirt of her dads, from some sort of feadathon or charity her school had been involved in. Pulling it from the pile, she raised her eyebrows at Dennis, watching him blush and hurriedly turn his back on her.
She tried to inject her tone with laughter even as she pulled on the top
"Shopping I think, for a start. I can't pop into Wizarding France looking like this."
"Uh, you look pretty good to me… Hermione."
Hermione did her best to ignore the lump in her throat as she reached to touch his shoulder.
"Thanks. Now Ginny should have got Ron involved, but I also need you to follow up with George, then contact Luna. I'll need to see her."
When Dennis only nodded, Hermione gave him another encouraging smile.
"Here, I'll walk you down to cover the bill, then keep watch while you apparate."
Clutching her satchel to her, Hermione felt the heavy weight of the ministry files, even as she waved Dennis away, watching him disappear from the hotels carpark. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, she was shocked to see any other British backpacker staring back out at her.
Shifting her bag, Hermione set off into the muggle world, alone once more.
000
She'd made the box when she first got her letter.
It was a gift box from the local charity shop. She'd gone after school, in her uniform one day. It was just before summer and the street had been a bustle of London traffic and heat collected on brick and sidewalk, the small shopping centre, butchers, news agents, woolworths. Her parent's small clinic was a short block away and now in her final form of primary school she could get to school and wait for them to drop her home. She'd pottered around the shops and sat in a café by the side markets most afternoons. Locals popping by from the local pub on the corner would wave and nod. Some of them were her parent's clients. Some of them she saw at the council library in the town's centre. Some were parents of the kids at school.
But none of them had known her secret.
That for months something had been crackling away under her skin, making odd things happen.
And for weeks she sat, she bought fizzy sugary terrible for her teeth soft drinks, she wandered to the newsagent and sat reading in the café and she had been
So
Smug.
None of the friendly shoppers and local faces knew that at night she would sit alone in her room, staring at an unlit candle as she drifted off to sleep, slowly watching the room glow.
In the morning, over breakfast, she would sit and stare at the floating pieces until they swam before her in slow but deliberate loops and swirls.
As she walked to town through the morning traffic she would summon the bus.
As she approached the bus stop without fail, no matter the time, it would roll to the curb on command.
Little things.
Things no one could ever see.
Nonsense things.
Things that mattered to no one else but her. She would get to school and head to the library, where most students waited in the rainy mornings in order to lounge and chat with friends. Alone, Hermione strolled the stacks and eventually would wander over to the librarian's desk. Miss Valer was in charge of the schools gifted platform and special needs division. She was busy most days and Hermione soon realised that her time was precious, but Miss Valer would smile and show her new websites and recommend different books. She worked in the library, rather than special needs room.
And Hermione was content. She had her lessons, read through lunch, finished off group projects while the others chatted and smiled, and joked and laughed and then her afternoons were free to wander. Free to pursue the little things that got her by.
It was no wonder that the very day after McGonagall's delivery of the letter, Hermione had bought the cardboard box and gone to the town's centre to the bookshop, reading awkwardly in the isles and avoiding pushy shopkeepers, then quickly to the library, reading in the aisles, borrowing just one book and rushing back to her parent's practice.
It was silent in the car that night. Her parents were at a loss for words and she had wanted so badly to show them the library book that sat in the box she'd bought, but instead she sat waiting for them to ask, to broach the subject and acknowledge that she was different, that she didn't belong to their world after all.
Walking through the streets of Paris, Hermione wandered into a small charity shop and tried to remember the hum of magic that had reassured her. She tried to remember the feeling of being special and being smug and not being alone, because there was a secret world that she belonged to.
Even if she was about to turn that secret world on its head.
Let me know what you think about the shift back in style
