1.

"Rose, for God's sake, listen to your father," Hermione snapped at her sulky eldest child as she hurried past the teen and Ron. She was hunting for Hugo, who had suddenly decided that he didn't want to leave Honeywell Junior, the Muggle primary school he'd attended since he'd turned five. It was to be his first year at Hogwarts, and he'd been dreadfully excited up until the day he'd realised his Muggle friends wouldn't be going with him. She was flustered, sweating, frantic, and not in the mood for sorting out arguments. "Do as you're told!"

"You don't even know what he's telling me, Mum!" Rose cried petulantly, and Hermione paused in the doorway, fixing an impatient eye on her fiery daughter and rather hapless looking husband. Couldn't Ron ever learn to pick his bloody battles?

"What is it, then?" she demanded, checking the time on her watch and inwardly screaming. They were going to be late.

"She wants to take makeup to school, 'Mione. She's thirteen. I'm not having her paint her face up like some kind of cheap tart at thirteen," Ron said with a weary kind of frustration, shaking a kit filled with off-brand Muggle makeup in the air. Hermione bit her tongue, squeezed her hands into tight fists, and counted to ten in her head before she answered him. Even so, she still spoke angrily.

"This is hardly the time! When we're running late for the train and I can't even find Hugo – and why doesn't an accio work on children? – honestly! Rose, do as your father says – now."

"But Mu-um," the redheaded girl whinged, looking disappointed and furious at once over being stymied. All her Muggle friends were experimenting – rather badly – with makeup now, and Rose understandably wanted to keep up. Hermione could sympathise, although where she'd been plain, Rose was remarkably pretty, in a quiet, elegant sort of way – when she wasn't sulking that was.

"No! I don't want to hear it! Your father and I will discuss the matter properly later, and if we decide you can have makeup we'll owl it to you – now get ready and get in the car," she snapped at her tearful sulky daughter, and then fled the room shouting for Hugo. She hoped desperately that she would be able to trust Ron to get Rose sorted, but had the sinking feeling that her hopes were going to be dashed. As usual. And they were.

"Can you please stop standing around and get their trunks in the bloody car?" she said as she came across Ron in the sitting room fiddling about with the DVR as she chivvied a found Hugo toward the garage. "Go on, love, hurry up, go get in the car," she told Hugo, giving him a nudge toward the garage. "Seriously, Ron, stop mucking about."

"But if I don't DVR my favourite shows I'll miss 'em all while I'm away, 'Mione!"

"And if we don't hurry up the children will miss the Hogwarts Express, and I'll have to be the one to take them to Hogsmeade, and then Hogwarts, and miss work, not you of course –"

"Because if I miss the portkey then I'll have to Floo-hop my way over to Turkey, and I won't get there in time for the game! Whereas if you're late to work, no one actually cares," Ron retorted with a nasty sort of thoughtlessness. It hurt badly, hearing him say that – saying it so easily that Hermione knew he meant it – and her temper flared as anger sprouted up from her hurt.

"You're only the assistant coach, Ron. Hardly indispensable, as much as you may like to pretend you are." He paled at her viciousness, freckles standing out starkly, then flushed red to his ears, and Hermione took a petty satisfaction in wounding him as badly as he'd wounded her. She knew even as she spoke that she'd regret lashing out, but the words just...happened.

"You always have to rub it in my face, don't you? I'm just never fucking good enough for you. Never."

"Only when you try to put me down by making out that my job is nothing more than petty paper-pushing, Ronald." She was protective of her job as Interrogator in Magical Law Advocacy and Interrogation. She had to be. A post-war initiative brought in by Kingsley Shacklebolt, the small sub-division of Magical Law Enforcement was often disparaged by the wizarding world at large. Hermione glared at Ron, bristling, and then remembered with a jolt their lateness, and swore under her breath.

"Look, now is not the time. We'll talk about it later." She snatched the telly remote from Ron and jammed her finger down on the off button. "Let's go."

"Fine." Ron hefted up the children's luggage, shooting Hermione a resentful glare before heading for the garage, as Hermione checked the house was locked and warded.

Six minutes later the children's trunks were in the boot, the children themselves buckled into the backseat, and Ron was carefully backing the car out of the driveway of their Wandsworth home with his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He was a terrible driver and yet insisted on driving them everywhere now he'd gotten his license, regardless of the fact that Hermione was a much better driver than he. Merlin knew how he'd even passed his test – Hermione suspected the illegal use of magic, even as she tried to tell herself Ron would never do something so irresponsible, especially given her job. But she hadn't managed to convince herself.

"She doesn't need makeup, Hermione," Ron was saying now out of nowhere – voice annoyed but pitched low in a fruitless attempt to keep the children from hearing. Hermione knew very well that he was just trying to pick a fight because of their squabble inside. She squinted into the tiny mirror on her sun visor, trying to beat her hair into some semblance of order.

"Let's not discuss it now, Ronald." She didn't like arguing in front of the children.

"You always say that." He shot her a look, a complicated expression shaping his face, nearly clipping a car as he pulled out of a quiet street onto a far busier road without giving way. He was going far too fast for the traffic-packed street and not looking where he was going and –

"Merlin, Ron!" Hermione slapped her hands against the dashboard to steady herself as they screeched to a halt to avoid rear ending the car in front, her hair falling out of the half-finished bun she'd been twisting it into. Rose squealed in fright and surprise, and Hugo yelped and laughed at once.

"Watch it dad!"

"Shit!" Ron ignored the chorus of toots breaking out from cars behind and ahead of him, and tried to look very serious and conscientious.

"Dad swo-ore!" Rose tattled in vengeance for the makeup ban, and Hermione tried not to explode with rage at everyone.

"Focus on the road, Ronald!" she added to the cacophony inside the car, her tone shrill and nagging, just as Ron kept complaining she was lately. But she couldn't help it, could she? Not when he was being so bloody unhelpful and frustrating. Not when he kept putting her down, and being stupidly overbearing, and frankly, driving her round the twist. She swallowed down her anger, twirling her still-too-bushy hair back into a haphazard bun and pinning it firmly in place with a mix of Muggle bobby pins and magic. The day had barely begun and she already couldn't wait for it to be over.

Fic Notes:

This fic is thoroughly plotted, and three-quarters written at approximately 156,000 words. I will be posting chapters twice weekly, Wednesdays and Sundays NZT. I've tried my best to thoroughly ground it in reality; all named Muggle locations are real places. Even Hermione's outfits are sourced from their named shops, just for fun.

The floriography book The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems (1857) exists and is available free here online if you google.

General Notes:

I'm back on a part-time basis after a long hiatus, despite family life and real life writing keeping me very busy. I'll be tying up loose ends and making some new beginnings as well.

I've gone through the entirety of Gravitation/The Risk-Reward Ratio and The Just World Fallacy, and edited them for style, typos, grammar, and minor plot inconsistencies that were bothering me, and as of 01/08/23 am beginning to re-upload them. I'm sure I've missed some mistakes (feel free to let me know once I'm done,) but they feel tidier to me now. I'm toying with the idea of an epilogue novella of vignettes, working title Axiom, and plotting it out just in case.

I'm also writing a sequel to Crumple, titled Crumple: Aftermath, which was in fact what pulled me back to my fanfics. Much like Crumple it has little actual plot, and is most angst, an exploration of trauma, and relationship building. I'm currently 65,000 words into it, and have begun posting it.

He Dreams He's Awake is still on hiatus, but not abandoned. I enjoy writing in present tense, and may yet pick it up again once Aftermath is finished.

Onions and Icebergs is officially abandoned, I'm sorry to say. There's a chance I may yet finish it in the future, but I have no solid plans to do so at this point.

I also have plans to write a new fic, set at Hogwarts several years after the war, so watch this space!

All the completed and active fics mentioned above are findable over at AO3, under my user name MissiAmphetamine (Kaleidoscope).

Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions or suggestions.

Lastly and most importantly, thank you so very much to everyone who has ever read my fics, and favourited, commented, shared, or recced them. I'm so happy to be back doing what I love again, and I hope my writing is still enjoyable!