1. Chapter 1

Copyright: What elements of this story that I own, and are not the property of anyone else, are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. That means that you can take anything in this story, up to and including the whole thing, and use it however you like, as long as you promise me three things:
1. You will link back to me (preferably to my author page)
2. You will not make money off whatever you do
3. You will share your work under these same conditions

Happy birth month Hermione!

So this is a thing I'm going to try: Every day for the month of September, I'm going to endeavor to put up a short little story answering one of the questions from the Tumblr/forum prompt "30 Days of Character Development." Don't hold it against me if I don't quite make it, but I'm going to do my best.

The first question is "Describe your character’s relationship with their mother or their father, or both. Was it good? Was it bad? Were they spoiled rotten, ignored? Do they still get along now, or no?" Enjoy!

“Hermione will be here soon.” Sarah Granger announced, placing the hastily-written letter on the counter and giving the delivery owl a treat, plucked from the bag that had for some years been kept by the window for just such a purpose.

Her husband, sitting at the kitchen table doing the daily crossword, gave an approving nod. “I hope she stays for a bit,” He commented absently, “Aha, ‘Great Yarmouth.’ She spends so much time with those Weasleys, we hardly get to see her anymore.”

“You can’t begrudge her for having friends, John.” She admonished.

He frowned. “No, never; but every summer she’s here for a few days, and then she’s off again. She’s even stopped coming home for Christmas.”

“She’s growing up.” Sarah replied simply, smiling despite herself at her husband’s attitude.

“She’s growing away, more like.” He retorted, setting down his pen. “We’re becoming less important, Sar, we’re becoming less like her. I love her, no matter what live she chooses, but I wish we could be more of a part of it.”

Sarah nodded sadly. “She’s not our little girl anymore. I always knew she’d grow up, pursue other interests. I just never thought she’d be so far out of our reach.”

“I never wanted her to go to that school.” John commented, running his hands through his short hair. “After six years, I barely recognize her anymore.”

“I know.” Sarah answered. A memory struck her, and she smiled. “D’you remember the first time she came home for Christmas?”

Despite his frustrations, John couldn’t help but smile back. “Of course. She was so excited; couldn’t stop talking about her best friend Harry Potter.”

“It was the first time I’d seen her excited about anything other than books.”

“Or otters,” John laughed, and Sarah laughed with him. “She cares about that boy, rather a lot.”

“She does,” Sarah agreed. “Do you think she would have found him if it wasn’t for ‘that school’?”

John swatted his wife, but gently, and with a smile. “No need to rub it in.”

“I’m just saying…”

“I know.”

The two fell silent, lost in their respective thoughts. John was thinking about the times he had missed with his daughter, barely being able to watch her grow up, gradually becoming less and less of a presence in her life until he didn’t know her friends, her interests, her life – except what she told him on the rare occasions she was home.

Sarah was thinking the same, but also of how Hogwarts had replenished Hermione’s zest for life, something that had been sorely lacking ever since Year Two when Masisie Lambert, who Sarah had thought would be her daughter’s first friend, had told the whole school about Hermione’s love of water-dwelling mammals, earning her the horribly unfair nickname of ‘Beaver.’

The ringing of the doorbell interrupted both of their thoughts. “That must be her,” Sarah declared, and indeed it was, and there was a great deal of hugging and back-patting as the Grangers got re-acquainted with their daughter. “I hope we can convince you to stay for a few days,” Sarah told her daughter in a mock-stern voice. “You’ve been around so little lately, your father and I have barely had a chance to admire the young woman you’re growing into.”

When Hermione replied only with a weak smile, both Sarah and John knew something was wrong. A look passed between the two parents, instantly communicating instructions from each to the other. “I’m going to put on some tea; would you care for some?” John asked, disappearing into the kitchen when Hermione nodded.

Sarah, meanwhile, led her daughter to the sitting room and sat beside her on the sofa. “Hermione,” The older woman began in a soothing voice, hand on the young woman’s back. “I know there’s something wrong; you know you can tell your father and I anything, right?”

Sarah was more than shocked when her daughter, the paragon of strength, who hadn’t cried since the age of four, suddenly cracked, right there on the sofa, tears streaming down her face. “Sweetheart!” Sarah exclaimed, pulling her daughter tightly against her chest. But Hermione pulled back. “Hermione, what’s the matter?”

“I’m so sorry mum.” The young woman answered, her voice damp and broken, as she pulled an all-to-familiar strip of wood from her sleeve.

“Herm-“

“Obliviate!”

2. Chapter 2

Day two, folks! Today’s prompt is 'What are your character's most prominent physical features?' I envision this one taking place in an alternate reality HBP, one where Ron's still an idiot but Harry's a little bit less of one. Enjoy!

Why can’t I stop looking at her?

It’s a little ridiculous, really. I’m Harry freaking Potter: I’ve stared down trolls, giant spiders, giant snakes, dementors, werewolves, dragons, murderers, and Dark Lords; I’ve been hit with every jinx, hex, and curse that magical minds have devised; I’ve been injured so many times that there’s a bed in the Hospital Wing that literally has my name on it.

But I can’t stop looking at Her. I feel like I’ve got it under control, and then I look up to ask her a question and she’s doing that thing where she nibbles on the end of her quill. And then I have to keep watching, I can’t turn away. Her eyes are moving at lightning speed, like she’s copying the book into her memory. Every so often she pauses, hitting on some fact that doesn’t quite fit, and her right eye narrows minutely, and she reaches over to the parchment beside her and scribbles down a note. Then she’s back, eyes whizzing over the pages almost faster than I can follow.

And she can do all of this without once looking away from the book in front of her. And I sit and watch, in awe of the perfect equilibrium of Her.

I’ve got to agree with Ron on this one: She’s brilliant. Scary, absolutely fucking terrifying, but brilliant.

Of course, even the great Hermione Granger can’t sustain herself on books alone; every so often she has to reach for the goblet of water beside her. This is where her perfect poise breaks down, but I can’t help but find it adorable the way she fumbles blindly with one hand while refusing to take her eyes off her book for even one second. I don’t know how long I watch before I reach over and push the goblet into her hand. That’s when she looks up, when she gives me that bright, wonderful smile that makes my stomach do things Cho could only dream of causing. And she takes a drink, and when she puts the goblet back down she sets it half-off the spine of a book so I lunge to keep it from falling, and we both laugh.

And then she goes back to reading, and I try to do the same.

But I’ve forgotten my question, so I have to look back up to ask her.

And she’s doing that thing with her quill.

***

It isn’t fair how attractive she’s gotten.

I mean, she was never ugly; even when she was so much younger, with her hair that refused to be tamed and her unnaturally large front teeth, she was still pretty cute. In retrospect, anyway; at the time I was clearly less than interested.

But now she’s something else. Can I help it if I stare a little bit too long when she bends down to pick up a fallen quill? Or when she arches her back to work out the kinks? A cynic might say I could, but that cynic has clearly never been exposed to the magnetic force of Hermione Granger’s ass, or Hermione Granger’s breasts. Good thing, too – if they had, then I’d have to kill them and that’s just uncomfortable for everyone.

Everything about her is perfect: her hair, once bushier than even I could believe, has straightened out, and when it catches the right light it turns from its normal – and already-fantastic – honey-brown into something that looks like wisps of gold, and tiny strands of it escape from the loose ponytail she’s pulled it into, and I want to reach over; I want to brush my fingertips across her skin, trace the line of her jaw, and tuck those golden strands behind the shell of her ear.

And her face would turn to mine, and she’d look at me with those eyes. And if I could avoid getting lost in them, in their gold-flecked brown, my eyes would trace the lines of her face past her nose with the sudden rounding-off, and down to her lips. Oh, her lips; thin, but aristocratically thin, not obscured with makeup, and it always seems like they’re parted just enough for me to see them glisten. And I would wonder if they tasted as good, and felt as soft, as they looked like they would. But I wouldn’t test my theory, because she’s pining for Ron and I’m a coward.

That cowardice is the same reason I sneak glances when she bends, or stretches, or otherwise does anything that might accentuate her behind or her be-front; things like lifting books, bending to pick things up, or even just walking in front of me. I’m not a pervert, honestly – my best friend is just hot.

Of course I could never do any more than that. I care about her too much, and so does Ron. The boundaries are clear: I can look – as long as I’m discreet – but I can’t touch.

But damn, do I want to touch.

3. Chapter 3

Welcome to Day 3! This is going to be a more serious one, and I'm sorry for that, but I've got two or three lighter ones coming up. Today's prompt is 'Name one scar your character has, and tell us where it came from. If they don’t have any, is there a reason?' Of course, it's Hermione, so naturally she has scars, but I decided to make up my own rather than do the boring old canon ones - this one takes place a few years after Hogwarts, but the Trio is under 30. Enjoy!

“The Wizarding World has not seen significant political or social change in three hundred years.” Hermione Granger declared from her podium, furiously blinking away the spots that appeared in her eyes as cameras flashed around her. This fact was depressing, but she tried not to let it get to her. After all: “This ends today.

“In the past, our stability has been a source of strength; it has allowed us to pass unseen, and to build our society into what it is.” Hermione didn’t personally think that was much of an accomplishment – her jaw clenched as she remembered the long debates with the Wizengamot where, rather than provide any sort of reasoned attacks on her policies, they had decided that of course her policies were bunk because she was muggleborn. But, once again: “This ends today.

“The old ways are no longer enough to sustain us. The rate of muggleborn emergence is on the rise and with it, greater integration with the Muggle world is inevitable. If we are to survive, we must evolve.

“We are growing.” She emphasized, and they were; the end of the Second Wizarding War had seen a tremendous increase in both birth rate and fertility rate and, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to the Ministry’s magibiologists, the emergence of muggleborns was increasing almost exponentially. “We are growing faster than we have ever grown before, and the Wizengamot has,” Reluctantly, she thought privately, And some of them only under threat of Harry, “Agreed that it will not be able to govern this new population.

“Therefore, I am pleased to announce the passing of the People’s Parliament Act and, with it, the creation of a new legislative body, with representatives that will be decided by the People, rather than by virtue of birth, and selected for their qualifications, not for their wealth. The first free elections in British Magical history will take place this coming October, and the Wizenmoot will have its inaugural sitting in February.” If the flashbulbs had been bright before, they were positively apocalyptic as Hermione finished her speech – so bad that she had to physically cover her eyes as she descended from the podium, dodging the reporter’s questions and slipping behind the curtain. Kingsley was there, but he only smiled at her and gave her a succinct “Good job” before he exited through her entrance, to make his own comment on the new changes.

Hermione couldn’t help but smile. She was making legitimate reform. It had been a tough battle, but she had done it.

***

“Congratulations, ‘Mione!” Hermione’s dear friend, clean-shaven for a change but still looking out-of-place at a Ministry gala, proclaimed loudly as she approached.

“Thank you, Ronald.” She accepted, nodding graciously as she had learned to do when socializing among the Wizarding elite. He grinned at her manner, but the grin slipped when she added, in her most dangerous voice: “And if you ever call me by that horrid nickname again, Molly is going to find herself with another daughter; understand me?” Ron’s ears went very, very red, and he nodded sullenly. Hermione immediately shot him a sickly-sweet smile, another skill she had learned in her political deals. “Now where’s Harry?”

“Here.” An unfamiliar voice called behind her. She turned to see an older gentleman with a long grey beard and a sharply pointed nose. It wasn’t Harry, and yet she knew it was; she could see the lines of his face underneath the charms and, of course, he hadn’t disguised his uniquely green eyes.

She briefly thought to admonish him, for disguising himself on today of all days, but she knew why he had done it: if Harry Potter walked into a room, he owned it – everyone was on him, and nothing else was happening as far as the media was concerned. He didn’t want that attention on the best of days, but today was her day, and he wanted it to be about her. So she just commended him on his glamour, which made him smile, and excused herself from her friends to make the obligatory toast.

“Attention, everyone, please!” The dull hum of the room died down, and all eyes were on her. “I want to thank everyone who made today possible: Minister Shacklebolt, of course; the entire Wizengamot; Director Thicknesse…” There was a long list of people to thank – complicated pieces of legislation like the PPA always had a lot of people involved – but Hermione did not get an opportunity to thank any more than she did; at that precise moment, several things happened very quickly. It was only later, sorting out the pieces on the courtroom floor, that Hermione was fully clear on the exact details. But to a layperson in the congregation, events unfolded like this:

A man had appeared behind Director Granger. Although that was unusual enough, it was all the more disconcerting that his face was covered by a white mask, uncomfortably similar to the marks of the old Death Eaters. Any illusions the assembly had about this being a publicity stunt, however, were dispelled when the man drew a cruel-looking knife, grabbed Director Granger about the middle, and pressed his blade into her throat. “Open your eyes, my pureblood brothers!” The man shouted in a throaty voice. To the average witch or wizard, this statement was disconcerting enough – it brought back memories of the Dark Times, when He-Whose-Name-Was-Still-Not-Spoken ruled by Pureblood supremacy. For some of the older attendees, it sent them back even further, to the First Great War, when Grindelwald had announced similar aims. Fortunately for you, dear anonymous witch or wizard, at this moment one of your neighbours had likely started whispering about Harry Potter.

Because Harry Potter had indeed appeared, dropping the charms that kept him disguised, throwing a stunner at the interloper, and bounding up to the stage in one fluid motion. What Harry had not anticipated, however, was how the knife would react to all of this excitement, which was why he felt as though his stomach had dropped through the floor when he turned from restraining the intruder to see Hermione Granger, Director of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and his very best friend in the entire world, kneeling on the ground in a pool of blood.

***

Hermione awoke very slowly. It was good that she did this, she reflected, because her head was pounding so violently that she may have thrown up if she’d woken too much faster. She tried opening her eyes, but the brightness of the light pointed at her instantly removed that idea from her head. “Where’mi?” She asked, her voice hoarse, not failing to notice the foul taste in her mouth. She cleared her throat, hissing at the unexpected pain of doing so, and tried again: “Where am I?”

Someone – something? – squeezed her hand. “Hermione,” Harry’s voice, sounding relieved and guilty and, to her ears, wonderful, “You’re in St. Mungo’s.”

“What happened?”

Harry shushed her gently, and she felt him brush some strands of hair behind her ear. “Don’t try to talk. You had an accident; someone hurt you.”

“Vol-“

Harry’s hushing was less gentle the second time. “I don’t know, they won’t let me in on the investigation. Please don’t try to talk.”

“Har-“

“You really should listen to Mister Potter.” A curt, unfamiliar voice admonished from a separate direction. Hermione had been in St. Mungo’s enough times – and wasn’t that a depressing thought – that she had a reasonable picture of the patient rooms in her mind. She knew she was on the bed, and that Harry was at her side, meaning this new voice must be a Healer, and he must have just walked through the door. “I’m Healer Griffiths,” Score one for brainpower, “I tried to patch you up. You were very lucky, Director Granger; if the blade had been even a fraction to the right, I’m not sure we’d be having this conversation.”

Hermione, for once listening to an expert opinion, didn’t respond, but she squeezed Harry’s hand and, slowly, opened her eyes. The glare wasn’t so bad, once she got used to it. Harry was indeed at her bedside, and judging by the growth on his chin he’d likely spent the night. The Healer was at the foot of her bed, looking at them with his head cocked to the side. “Will there be any permanent damage?” She heard Harry ask.

The Healer shook his head. “The blade only grazed the trachea, so there shouldn’t be any lasting effects, except for a bit of soreness for a few days. However, the throat is a tricky place, so I wasn’t able to completely heal the surface wound.” Hermione’s hand, the one not in Harry’s, flew to her throat. Her fingers brushed the bandage around her neck before another hand – Harry’s – gently pulled her hand away. “There will be some scarring, but only superficial damage.”

Hermione turned to Harry, and smiled, letting him know she was okay with that. He smiled back. They both had their share of scars, so what was one more to the list? At the moment, and for the future, they were both just happy that she was alive.

4. Chapter 4

Today's prompt: 'How vain is your character? Do they find themselves attractive?' I'm warning you guys that I'm having some trouble with tomorrow's, so it might not get posted at exactly the same time. Hopw you enjoy!

“This is the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life.”

Such was the attitude of one Hermione Granger on this particular December evening. The so-called ‘brightest witch of the age,’ who didn’t feel particularly bright at the moment, was standing buck-naked in the middle of her dormitory – with the curtains drawn and protected by several NEWT-level privacy charms, naturally – staring at herself in a mirror. She was supposed to be getting into her fancy, gorgeous, expensive dress. She was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on her look for the Yule Ball. She was supposed to be meeting Viktor in a few minutes.

She was supposed to be thrilled.

She wasn’t thrilled.

She was terrified.

The reason for her terror was simple: Hermione Granger was, simply put, not an attractive young lady.

Certainly not attractive enough to be on the arm of a world-class Quidditch star – even though he honestly wasn’t much of a looker either. She knew the kinds of girls men like that normally went after, if Lavender and Parvati’s magazines were any indication, and she didn’t quite fit the mold; chesty, leggy, blonde, and slender were not characteristics that anyone in their right mind would apply to her, and she knew it.

Of course, if she was truly honest with herself, she wasn’t really interested in impressing Viktor at all. Her target was different, the object of her silent affections for the past year, and the secret sex idol of the entire female population of Hogwarts – although Hermione could confirm with reasonable certainty that none of the girls had achieved that level of intimacy with him. She was, of course, out to impress Harry Potter.

Harry Potter, who saved her from a troll. Harry Potter, who risked his life to save a girl he barely knew. Harry Potter, who risked unravelling the fabric of the universe to set an innocent man free. Harry Potter who had stared down a dragon. Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry wasn’t exactly a famous Quidditch player, at least not outside of Hogwarts, but Hermione was equally aware that his fame and his purported wealth would attract a certain breed of woman; and this was to say nothing of his developing looks and his heroic personality!

Hermione sighed heavily, crossing her arms in a futile attempt to plump up her smallish breasts, simultaneously twisting her hips to survey her flat behind. Contrary to popular belief, the mysteries of love and sex weren’t complete mysteries to her; she had read a lot, naturally, but she had also observed the older students, and her observations were pretty unanimous: boys liked girls with large chests, plump buttocks, lean legs, or all of the above. Hermione, unfortunately, was a none-of-the-above. Her chest, while larger than some of the girls her age, was nothing spectacular; her buttocks were barely present; her legs weren’t distressingly large, but stockier than most.

Hermione sighed again. Maybe she just wouldn’t go tonight; resign herself to a life of spinsterhood, living alone with three hundred cats, but never having to feel the pain of rejection. She nodded slightly, turning to pick up not her dress, but her plain robes. That sounded like a good plan.

“Come on in there, Hermione.” Parvati’s voice on the other side of the curtain made her pause. “You’re going to be late, and we want to see you in your dress.” The girl broke into a mess of giggles, joined with those of her best friend Lavender, and Hermione had to forcibly remind herself that they weren’t laughing at her – they were just excited.

Of course, Parvati had good reason to be excited: she’d be going to the ball with Harry, Hogwarts’ most eligible bachelor. Hermione ground her teeth as she remembered this unhappy fact; she’d held Viktor off for weeks, lied (well, half-lied) to Ron when he’d asked her like a total git, hoping that Harry would think to ask her. But he went and asked Parvati of all people.

But she couldn’t be mad at Parvati for that, not when it was her own fault. Harry had heard the lie she told Ron, that she already had a date to the ball. The truth was that Viktor had asked her, quite persistently, in fact, but she had responded with a coy ‘I have to think about it.’ But Harry didn’t know that, and it wasn’t fair to Parvati for Hermione to sulk on such a happy day for the Indian girl.

“I’m not going tonight.” She responded shortly, tightening the belt on her school skirt.

The giggling stopped abruptly. “What?” Lavender and Parvati asked at once. “Why not?”

Hermione gave the mirror a sad look, and responded: “He’s not going to think I’m pretty enough.”

There was silence for a moment, but Hermione could actually hear the eye-rolling in Lavender’s voice when she responded: “Hermione, do you really think he cares about that? After all this time, I think it’s pretty obvious he’s not interested in your looks; he’s interested in you.”

This made Hermione stop. It was a good point; she had been so caught up in what Famous People usually did, that she had never stopped to consider what Harry would do. It was true that he wasn’t exactly a typical Famous Person, and he had certainly never treated her less for her lac of beauty. A slight smile flickered across Hermione’s face when she looked back in the mirror and saw her hair, for once in her life tamed into something normal-looking, and the smile gained strength when she saw the understated makeup that Ginny, Parvati, and Lavender had helped her apply – not nearly as much as they’d put on themselves, but enough to make her eyes shine like gold and make her feel like a queen, sitting in the dorm in her dressing gown.

“Fair point.” She spoke half to herself, half to her dormmates, as she flung her uniform to the floor and picked up her dress. Harry may not be interested in looks, but tonight she was going to show him what she had

5. Chapter 5

Today's prompt: "What is your character's rating on the Kinsey scale?" I'll save you all the trip to Wikipedia by telling you that the Kinsey scale is a seven-point scale for quantifying sexual orientation: a score of 0 means you're completely heterosexual, a 6 means you're completely homosexual, and there's a whole range of bisexuality in between (There's also an X rating for asexuality, but I don't really think it counts).

On that note, this is one of only a few chapters in the whole story that isn't Harmony: Hermione/Ginny is the pairing here, because I thought it made the most sense.

I'm really interested in what you all think of this one; this is the very first time I've ever written any kind of slash fiction, and I'd love to get feedback on how I did.

“Her…Hermione?” Hermione Granger, in what should not have come as any great surprise, had her nose in a book (The Skeletal System of the Giant: New Speculation – much more fascinating than many gave it credit for) when Ginny, red-haired younger sister of her friend Ron, hesitantly interrupted her. The fourteen-year-old witch turned from where she was reading all about how giant bones are hollow – to stay light enough to be mobile – to see the youngest Weasley sitting on her bed, worrying the well-worn sheets as she refused to meet Hermione’s eyes. “Can I…Ask you something?”

Hermione felt a little bad about the whole situation; the Weasleys were nice enough to let her into their home before the Quidditch World Cup, and Ginny had graciously shared her room with the older witch, virtually a complete stranger. And yet here was Hermione Granger, ever the consummate houseguest, shutting out all the world. “Of course, Ginny.” She answered kindly. “Ask me anything.”

“Even a really personal question?”

That gave Hermione a moment of pause, but she decided to answer: “Sure, anything; what’s on your mind?” How much trouble could a thirteen-year-old witch possibly get into with personal questions?

“Have you ever kissed a boy?”

A lesser being would have squawked in surprise and indignation at being asked such a question by so young a girl. A lesser being would have asked why in the seven hells Ginevra Molly Weasley would want to know such a thing. A lesser being would have immediately launched into a detailed play-by-play of every romantic exploit, all the way down to pre-school crushes.

In many ways, Hermione was not a lesser being. But on this particular subject, as she proved with bulging eyes and a dropped textbook, she apparently was. “Ginny,” She hissed, glancing to the door as if expecting Mrs. Weasley to appear, summoned by the impure thoughts of her daughter. “Why on earth do you want to know a thing like that?”

Ginny flinched away at the older girl’s reaction, and Hermione immediately felt bad. It was quite obvious that Ginny wasn’t completely comfortable asking those sorts of questions and, Hermione supposed, she was reaching the age when she would begin to be curious about boys – Hermione herself had succumbed to the temptation to read some of her parents’ medical books at about the same age. “It’s just…Fred and George are always bragging about how they had their first kisses so young, and how amazing they were, but none of the boys are paying me any attention; is there something wrong with me?”

Hermione sighed, seeing Mrs. Weasley’s influence. The matronly woman was very kindly and good-hearted, but she clearly subscribed to the kind of traditional gender roles claptrap that muggles had moved away from in the sixties. “Oh Ginny,” Hermione bemoaned, pitying the poor girl more than words could express. “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’ll happen when it happens, and it’s different for everyone.”

“Have you had your first kiss?”

Hermione paused. “No.” She replied finally. “And I’m okay with that. I don’t need validation from a boy to feel complete, and neither do you.”

“Do you want to be kissed?” Ginny asked, innocently.

All of Hermione’s pomp, generated from her progressive diatribe, deflated as Ginny’s question recalled to her mind the dream she had been having on and off since the end of Third Year: the one where she was Sleeping Beauty, in an enchanted sleep at the top of a tall tower, and her Prince Charming flew up on a hippogriff to awake her with a kiss. That Prince Charming was black-haired and had the most stunningly green eyes was a completely separate concern. “Yes.” She answered, her voice much smaller than it had been a mere moment ago.

Ginny was silent for a long while, and Hermione desperately hoped that would be the end of it. She had been having a lot of strange feelings over the summer, feelings her doctor assured her were normal hormonal responses to stimuli but that had no stimuli to speak of, and she would personally have rather sorted those out without also having to entertain the submissively feminine notions of a barely-teenaged witch. But alas, Ginny asked again: “Do you ever think about what it would be like?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” Ginny responded vaguely, her ears reddening in classic Weasley fashion, “How it would feel; if he’d like it; if you’d be any good.”

“Yeah.” Hermione admitted, with no small amount of shame.

“Do…do you…”

“Do I what?” Hermione interrupted, snapping a bit more than she’d intended. Ginny’s questions were hitting a surprisingly sore spot in the young woman – a spot she would have to examine and understand.

“Want to practice?” The redhead finished, resolutely looking at the sheet she was twisting into knots.

Hermione’s book tumbled to the floor with a crash. There was no way she had heard what she thought she had heard. “Could you repeat that please?” She asked in what she hoped was a measured voice.

The redness of Ginny’s ears had spread over the rest of her face, turning her the most impressive Gryffindor scarlet Hermione had ever seen on a human face. “It’s just that I haven’t had my first kiss and I really want it to happen but I’m afraid I’ll be terrible and that I won’t get kissed any more if I’m no good and what if I really like it I don’t want to be made fun of.” The small girl took a few deep breaths before continuing at a less manic pace. “And you haven’t had yours either, and I know you won’t make fun of me, and I promise I won’t make fun of you, so why can’t we practice on each other?”

Several dozen reasons occurred to Hermione, in fact, including: their difference in age; that Hermione was Ginny’s guest; and that one of Hermione’s best friends was Ginny’s own brother. But she couldn’t deny that the proposal was an appealing one. Hermione’s was the sort of personality that refused to be sub-par at any activity (with the exception of flying), and that certainly included kissing, and she knew very well that the only way to improve was through practice.

Also, she had to admit, there was a certain amount of intrinsic appeal in kissing the youngest Weasley. Poor Ginny suffered from a truly terrible case of ‘the gingers,’ but as she was growing up the freckles were beginning to recede, and her pale skin gave her an almost-imperial complexion. She didn’t think of herself as homosexual, but Hermione had to admit that Ginny was a cute little girl.

And besides, maybe she could use the results of this practice on Harry someday.

“Okay.” Hermione answered shyly. It didn’t look as though Ginny was going to take the initiative, so Hermione rose from the camp bed she had been sitting on and took a place beside the girl who still refused to meet her eyes. Hermione’s heart was pounding as she hesitantly reach out to the girl’s chin – good lord her skin was soft – and tilted her head up so their eyes met. And then it happened.

“Wow.” Was all Ginny could say when they broke apart, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open.

“Wow.” Hermione agreed, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks. She couldn’t believe she had just done that, or that it had felt so good; Ginny’s lips were smooth and soft and moist and tasted a little bit like raspberry. Hermione licked her own cracked lips self-consciously, knowing that she didn’t take as good of care of them as she should, and feeling bad about that for the first time in her life. “I don’t think you’re going to have anything to worry about.” She informed the girl lightly.

“You neither.” Ginny replied. Then her eyes opened, and Hermione noted a mischievous glint that she had never seen there before. “But there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to improve, is there?”

“None that I can think of.”

6. Chapter 6

Today's prompt: 'Describe your character's happiest memory.' You may not feel like this qualifies, but I very much do. This one takes place not long after chapter 3.

I got a request to explain exactly what the hell I'm doing with this story. So here it is:

There's a list that's been going around Tumblr called "30 Days of Character Development." The idea is that every day for 30 days, you post a response for one of your made-up characters to a question from a standard list. What I'm doing is taking that list, and writing short vignettes answering them for Hermione. That's really what this story is: a series of vignettes. They all take place in the same universe - the same timeline, if you prefer - but they take place at varying times in Hermione's life; I'm not arranging them chronologically because I'm not always entirely sure where they'll all fall in the chronology.

Hope that cleared some stuff up, and I hope you enjoy the show!

Come on Potter, Harry Potter berated himself, She’s your best friend; what’s the worst that could happen?

Harry was pacing up and down in the main foyer of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. One of the benefits of being Harry Potter, and also being best friends with the Director of the department, was that he could get much further into the inner workings of the Ministry than most civilians. One of the downsides of not being an employee of the Ministry, though, was that he could not quite go everywhere – not even The Chosen One was exempt from that rule.

So he was waiting for his dear friend Hermione Granger, Grand Exalted Chief of the DRMC, to get out of one her seemingly endless meetings so he could treat her to lunch and, hopefully, get a positive answer to a question that had been burning brightly in the back of his mind ever since she had broken up with the last swine who had dared call himself her boyfriend.

Ah but there was Hermione now, waving to the secretary as she exited the imposing double doors of her sanctum. Hermione Granger had done very well for herself in the years following the war, climbing the ranks of the Ministry and making some huge gains for all of magical kind: elves, goblins, centaurs, even muggleborns; and only last year she had been put in charge of the entire department, the youngest Director in Ministry history at the tender age of 31.

Hermione grinned brilliantly at the sight of him, and Harry wished he felt half as good as she looked. He knew that he needed a shave, and a bit of a longer shower than he’d had that morning, but his schedule kept him too busy for much personal care – these weekly lunches were sometimes all he could carve out of his week; such was the life of a Healer.

“Hey Harry.” Hermione greeted him, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she pulled him into a hug. “Sorry I’m late; Wizenmoot elections are coming up, and Pius is all over me about background checks.”

“Tell me about it.” He told her, grateful for the distraction. And she did.

***

Hermione talked his ear off for their entire lunch, but Harry didn’t mind; she had an exciting job, and these were exciting times for her, coordinating a representational government for a dozen different sentient species across the country.

In all honesty, Harry was bored stiff by the conversation. Magical politics were not an area he could hold his mind on, which helped explain why he had turned down every offer to get into the game. But he listened attentively, nodding and encouraging in all the right places, partly because it was Hermione and partly because he didn’t really want to have an opening where he would have to speak. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to – he did, more than anything in the world right now – but he was scared of how she would react, scared that his words wouldn’t be right.

But his opportunities to stall were running out. “I’m sorry for talking so much.” She apologized shyly as they approached her apartment door. Harry waved it off with a grunt. “I really enjoy these lunches, Harry; I wish we could do them more often.”

“Yeah.”

Hermione frowned. “Harry, is anything wrong? You’ve been a mood ever since we got back to the Ministry.” Harry shook his head, lying terribly to his best friend. “Okay,” She replied, clearly not believing him, “If you’re sure. Same time next week?” Harry nodded, and Hermione turned to her door with a smaller smile than she’d worn when they met an hour earlier.

“Hermione?” Harry called out suddenly, girding up his courage. She turned immediately. “Do you…I mean, would you like to…go out with me? Sometime?”

Her face lit up, and it sent Harry’s heart into the stratosphere. “I’d love to.”

“Cool.” He could feel the stupid grin spreading across his face, but he didn’t care. Until he suddenly did, and it vanished. “You know that I’m asking you on a date, right?”

She laughed. “Yes, Harry; I know.”

“And you’re still saying yes?”

“Yes, Harry; I am.”

The grin returned. “Cool. Saturday?”

“Saturday is good.”

“Cool. Bye Hermione!”

“Bye, Harry.”

As soon as he heard the doors close, Harry punched the air in triumph, totally unaware that a certain brunette witch would do almost the same thing when she closed the door to her office.

7. Chapter 7

Today's prompt: 'Is there one event your character would like to erase from their past? Why?' Should be pretty obvious.

This is a really short one, where very little happens, but it's still important. I took a few liberties with canon, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. Enjoy!

“Wakey-wakey, little mudblood.” The cold, high-pitched voice of Bellatrix Lestrange is not the ideal sound for anyone to wake up to. For Hermione Granger, however, it was much worse.

Hermione came to in an unfamiliar room – though recalling her whereabouts from memory was a simple task – in the unenviable position of being restrained in a chair, staring at the manically grinning face of the least sane Death Eater of the bunch. It briefly occurred to Hermione to beg to be released, but she reasoned that it was likely to be completely ineffectual. Instead, she resorted to the next most pressing question: “What do you want with me?”

Bellatrix didn’t answer, but her intent became clear when she pointed her wand at Hermione’s forehead and screeched “Legilimens.”

Somewhere in the distance, Hermione heard a female scream. By the sound of it, the poor girl was having her soul forcibly removed and shredded into minute pieces. It took Hermione a whole minute for the pain to fully process and realize that the screams were coming from her.

Bellatrix’s legilimency was neither subtle nor polite; it was rude, harsh, and terrible. Hermione’s every neuron was on fire; her eyes glazed over and she saw nothing but bright, blinding lights; she could hear nothing but the blood rushing in her ears and Bellatrix’s cruel laughter as she raped a young girl’s mind.

Then it stopped. Hermione was faintly aware of a low hum, maybe some kind of conversation, and then the voice itself came right to Hermione’s ear. “You’ve been very helpful, mudblood.” She cooed. “We know everything we need to, but that was just too much fun. Legilimens.”

Hermione had read that it was possible to get used to torture, to build up a tolerance. Enduring the pain of Bellatrix’s invasion into her mind, though, made her less than inclined to believe it: there was no consistency to the attack, except for the constant pain; Bellatrix moved randomly through her victim’s mind, Hermione dimly aware that memories of her life were being accessed as Bellatrix cackled.

The pain stopped suddenly. “Was that as good for you as it was for me?” Bellatrix asked, her sickeningly sweet voice piercing through the pained fog of Hermione’s mind. Hermione could only groan in response, her brain not quite able to form sentences. “As entertaining as it is to watch you squirm,” Bella grinned, “I’m tired of watching you cream your knickers over Potter. Crucio.”

Hermione screamed. And screamed. And screamed. By the time she was finally released from Bellatrix’s ‘care,’ she had screamed her throat completely raw, but still always managed to find the voice to keep screaming.

8. Chapter 8

Welp, I failed at this challenge.

I apologize profusely to everyone who has been waiting so long for this update - complications in my personal life had completed sapped my desire to write. As it stands, I'm unlikely to complete the challenge as I originally anticipated, but I hope to at least get through all 30 prompts.

Today's prompt: 'What is your character’s favourite ice cream flavour? Color? Song? Flower?' See if you can identify all four in the chapter below (Hint: It's not that hard). Also keep an eye out for the symbolism I threw in, because pretty much every answer to that question is in some way symbolic.

As a final note, there is a single lyric from a song included in this chapter. I don't think that violates FFnets rules, and I'm sure the Copyright Gods will forgive me, but now you know. Enjoy!

“I have to admit, Mister Potter,” Hermione teased, “You certainly have a different idea of how to take a girl on a date.” This was hardly Hermione’s first date with a boy, but it was certainly her favourite – and for more reason than just who was accompanying her. All of her previous boyfriends had tried to impress her by spending money: fancy restaurants and expensive dinners and such; all the kinds of places Hermione was always going for work-related ‘social’ events.

Not Harry, Hermione smiled to herself. He knew her better than anyone, and had listened to her complain over and over about those fancy places: the restrictive and revealing cocktail dresses, the painfully tight shoes, the absolutely ghastly food (typically prepared by house elves, no less), the constant clamouring for photographs of the risen political star. So he had not brought her to such a place. Instead, he brought her to an ice cream shop. A muggle ice cream shop.

Harry laughed, a light smile on his face. “And you’re loving every minute of your vanilla ice cream, Miss Granger.”

Hermione pulled on a mock-offended look and swatted him on the arm. “Don’t you dare make fun of vanilla ice cream, Potter.” Harry tried to look cowed, but she saw him failing to conceal the amusement in his eyes and the smile tugging at his lips, and soon enough they were both laughing uproariously.

Hermione was amazed at how easy it was to be with Harry. Her other dates had been terribly dull, in stuffy locations and forced conversation; even the ones that started out well eventually devolved into that. With Harry, she didn’t have to pretend to be enjoying herself; just seeing him, seeing his eyes light up when she laughed at his terrible jokes, was enough for her.

This wasn’t really their first date, Hermione realized as they laughed and bantered. Their easy back-and-forth was a staple of their lunches, and of their relationship in general. What this was, though, was their first date, which meant that Hermione was free to stare as much as she liked at the attractive man her scrawny best friend had turned into.

Whatever Harry’s wonderful physical qualities – and there were many, from his physique to his silky-smooth hair – his best feature was still his eyes. Hermione wheedled people for a living; her bread and butter depended on her ability to know what people were thinking. This was something she had become very good at, but she had first started learning on Harry. His eyes were so entrancing, so expressive; that remarkable shade of emerald green pulled you in, and then you couldn’t help but see every emotion reflected in them. Amusement, anger, happiness, sadness; Harry’s eyes were Hermione’s favourite book, and she could read anything in them. Her favourite pastime, in fact, far more so even then re-reading Hogwarts, A History for the fifty-seventh time (and counting), was staring into Harry’s eyes.

This was usually a very unfortunate fact. Her other boyfriends had tended to get upset when their girlfriend would stare at another bloke’s eyes for long periods, and Harry’s other girlfriends had similar reactions. So Hermione had been forced to abstain from her favourite hobby, and it was only now that she was given free reign that she remembered how much she had missed it. She was especially reminded just how much she loved their colour. The colour of Harry’s eyes had no equal that Hermione had ever seen – even the pickled toads of Ginny’s hilariously awful poem failed to exactly capture their hue, the way the light reflected them in exactly the right way at all angles.

But all of these thoughts, even her ruminations on the colour of his eyes, flew from Hermione’s mind when a string of piano came over the shop’s sound system. “I love this song!” She exclaimed, cutting him off in the middle of a sentence about a recent resurgence in infectious diseases that she would normally have found much more interesting than one might think.

Harry blinked. “You like muggle music?”

She flushed slightly, trying to prevent herself from humming along. “Not all of it, but I like this one.”

She was surprised when he stood up abruptly. “In that case,” He announced with so much pomp and gallantry that she had to giggle, “May I have this dance?”

“You may,” She answered, rising to meet him and failing to keep back her laughter even as he failed to keep back his.

Never a wish better than this, the speaker sang as the pair danced, laughing, oblivious to the looks of the other patrons – those smiling and those scowling – as they danced, When you only got 100 years to live.

***

Hermione awoke the next morning on such an emotional high that she had to wonder if her date with Harry had been a dream. Surely, she imagined to herself, occasions such as what she had experienced could only exist in her fantasies. It wasn’t until she rolled over and saw the barn owl perched outside her window, a bouquet of orchids tied to its leg, that she would finally admit to herself that it had happened.

9. Chapter 9

Today's prompt: "Who does your character trust?" I tried to take this in a direction that doesn't seem obvious at first glance so, enter Luna!

This is the first time I've ever devoted any serious effort into writing Luna, and she's very difficult. The direction I'm taking her in this is inspired by something John Cleese said once, that "extraordinarily intelligent people are not literal-minded." So I took her in that vein, and I hope it translates well. Enjoy!

“Bloody buggering blistering bollocks.”

“Are you playing a game?”

Hermione looked up from her seat, the place in some remote corner of the castle where she had fled after witnessing – after witnessing – to see the odd blonde Ravenclaw known by some as Loony Lovegood regarding her curiously. At least, Hermione imagined her to be curious; though Luna’s expression had never changed from her usual half-vacant stare, the sight she had stumbled upon, that of Hermione Granger sitting alone in some dark corner trying desperately not to cry, was not what anyone in Hogwarts would have considered typical.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you playing a game?” The younger girl repeated.

“What makes you think I’m playing a game?”

“Your alliteration.” She answered. “And you’re sitting all by yourself. I wondered if maybe you were amusing yourself with a word game. It’s okay if you are; I do it all the time.”

“No, Luna, I’m not playing a game.”

“Oh.” There was a beat. Hermione hoped, for one precious moment, that Luna would leave her in peace. No such luck. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting, on my own, and thinking.” All of that was true, incidentally, but the specifics of why she was sitting in that particular spot, why she had chosen to be alone, and what she was thinking about were not things she was particularly inclined to share with anyone, let alone the bizarre and possibly deranged Ravenclaw.

“Oh.” Another beat. “You don’t look like you’re having much fun.”

Hermione choked out a laugh, despite herself. “No, I’m not.”

“You should be.”

“Why?” Hermione asked, startled by the emphasis Luna had placed on that sentence.

The blonde’s head cocked slightly to one side. “Because Gryffindor won the Quidditch cup, of course.”

Hermione slumped. If there was one thing in the world that she hadn’t wanted to be reminded of, it was that. She had been happy for the team, and most of all for Harry, but that happiness had been initially tempered by her own apprehensions about what she had planned to do after the match, and then it had been completely squashed by what she had seen happen after the match.

“Aren’t you happy for Harry?” The Ravenclaw asked, and for the first time her airy disposition was tinged with something, something very faintly resembling curiosity.

“Of course I am.” Hermione answered sharply, but the words fell flat even to her ears. She wanted to be happy for him, that much was true, but her selflessness had to stop somewhere, and it seemed as though she had finally found out where.

“Then why…OHH.” Hermione looked up sharply, and Luna’s eyes had gone as wide as saucers. Hermione could almost see the light bulb flicking on in the younger girl’s brain. “Harry’s with Ginny, isn’t he?”

“Wh- How on Earth did you know that?” Hermione sputtered. It was impossible – Harry and Ginny had kissed only five minutes before, in the very private Gryffindor Common Room no less (at least, private to inquisitive Ravenclaws). “How could you possibly have known that?”

“Oh, a kirlywig told me.” She replied indistinctly.

“A kirlywig?”

“Oh yes. They feed on people’s secrets. There’s quite a lot of them in Hogwarts, now that I think about it.”

The lunacy of such a race existing passed through Hermione’s mind; the impossibility of a species existing that could survive purely on the interaction of neurons in the brains of other creatures. It briefly occurred to her to tell this to Luna, to admonish her for believing in such a silly thing, but then she thought of Lavender and Parvati, and the many other girls of Hogwarts who gossiped for what seemed to be every waking minute of their lives. It seemed to Hermione, after that thought, that she was aware of a few kirlywigs herself. “Yes, Harry and Ginny are together. He just kissed her in the Common Room.” She answered, the dull ache of her reality spreading through her chest at the admission. “Everybody’s thrilled.”

“You’re not.”

“No.” She replied, taken aback by the blonde’s frank tone. “I’m not.”

“Why?”

Hermione didn’t want to tell Luna. She had kept her secret for quite a long time, and she thought she was happy to keep them that way. But, it seemed, her heart knew something that her head hadn’t figured out, so Hermione found herself spilling her sad story to, of all people, Luna Lovegood. “I’m jealous,” She began. “I’ve been with Harry from day one. He’s saved my life, I’ve saved his, neither of us would be where we are if it weren’t for the other. We need each other. Or,” Hermione held her head in her hands, “I need him. I…I love him.”

She expected Luna to laugh. This was a reasonable assumption, as far as Hermione was concerned. Luna was from the house of logicians after all, and it was logically contradictory to suggest that she and Harry could ever be a couple; he was Harry Potter, the attractive and talented hero, and she was Hermione Granger, the ugly duckling. It was a sad, girlish fantasy, the sort of things eight-year-olds would write about David Beckham in their diaries.

But Luna was unique among all the students of Hogwarts for more reason than one, and she did not laugh. She didn’t even snicker, or snort with even the mildest hint of derision. In fact, she reacted to this revelation – a startling and juicy piece of gossip to any other female resident of the castle – as though Hermione had said nothing more controversial than commenting on the weather. All she said in response, which seemed to Hermione to be rather strange, was: “I lost my shoes again.”

Despite herself, Hermione looked down and saw that Luna was, indeed, barefoot. “The cold can’t be good for your feet,” She comment, trying to mask the way her voice threatened to crack with tears, and thankful for the distraction from her own problems. “You should try to get them back.”

Luna’s eyes went wide, and she shook her head violently. “Oh no. They keep getting lost when I do that. They have to find their way back to me, if I’m to hold onto them.”

“What if they don’t?”

Luna cocked her head to the side, and seemed to consider the possibility. “They will.” She replied, finally. “I have a good feeling about those shoes. Like we belong together.” For once, her eyes were fixed directly on Hermione, and Hermione saw something in them that was as not-Luna-like as she had ever seen.

It seemed, in that moment, that Hermione understood Luna a whole lot better than she ever had before. In that moment, she felt much better about her whole situation, as terrible as it was; she had a Good Feeling. “Thank you, Luna.” She said, her voice much stronger.

“For what?” Luna asked, but the look in her eye told Hermione that she was welcome.

“Would you like me to transfigure you some slippers?”

“That would be nice; the castle is quite cold at night.”

10. Chapter 10

OHAI, remember me?

It's been a long time since I updated (now nearly a month after I'd originally planned to be done with this story), but this one took me much longer to write than it really should have. I hope you enjoy it, all the same.

The prompt is 'Can you define a turning point in your character’s life? Multiples are acceptable.' The setting shouldn't be too hard to guess, and nor should the "turning point." I went through a lot of revisions of this chapter, and this is the best I came up with, so I hope you enjoy despite the lateness.

My name is Hermione Granger. I am fourteen years old. I am falling.

An optimist would say that I was flying, but I’ve flown before, and this is not flying. Flying implies safety, such as that offered by a pressurized metal cylinder in the hands of trained professionals; what I am doing right now – that is, sitting on the back of a hippogriff piloted by Harry Potter, thirteen-years-old and notable for his lack of flight training – has no such illusions. This isn’t flying: it’s falling with something faintly resembling style.

Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t have allowed myself into this mess. But then, I remember, these are hardly ordinary circumstances. A decades-old murder mystery mixed up with political subterfuge, all tied together by Dark Lords and something involving time travel. Even for me, an associate of Harry Potter – for whom daring, convoluted plots are as common as toast – this isn’t exactly a typical Thursday.

I mentally kick myself for this line of thinking. After all, what right do I have to complain, considering the person with whom I am sharing this suicidal ride? I still have both my parents. I was raised by a family who cared for me. I didn’t wonder, every minute of the day, if there was anywhere I really and truly belonged.

Okay, maybe I did that last one. I wonder if that’s why I’m here, why I continue to follow Harry on his damned fool idealistic crusades, trotting blindly after him into all sorts of trouble. It’s not because I pity him – although I do, even though I know he would be very cross with me if he knew that – but if it because I feel like, in some small way, we’re the same? That sounds plausible, but it doesn’t explain why I’m here, risking my neck; kinship is one thing, but there’s a dreadfully small list of people for whom I would risk death by hippogriff.

Is it because I don’t want him to think less of me? True, I’ve always had a very external locus of self-worth; my own self-esteem has always been very closely tied to how others feel about me. But I know Harry; I know that he wouldn’t think less of me for running away from his adventures. Ron would, certainly, but bugger to Ronald Weasley: the louse thinks that a broomstick is worth more than his friend’s life.

No, I know why I’m here; why I’m always here, and why I will always be here by Harry’s side.

I’m here because I know him.

Because, despite everything that has happened, all the pain he has suffered, he remains a good person.

And I want him to stay that way.

I’m here because I want to be here.

I’m here because I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

I’m here because I need him.

I’m here because I love him.

I love Harry Potter.

Bugger.

11. Chapter 11

So sorry it took me so long to get this one up; life recently became insane, and I've been working out the best way to say what I wanted with this.

Today's prompt is: 'Is there an animal you can equate with your character?'

Today's update also features the triumphant return of John and Sarah Granger, likely for the last time in this story.

A quick word about sources: John Granger is inspired by John Green, American author and one-half of the popular vlogbrothers Youtube channel. I have great respect for John, and I could think of no better way to honour him than to make him Hermione's father. I also stole a piece of diaologue from one of his videos. I also owe a slight dialogue debt to Ken Robinson, a British educational theorist whose 2007 TED talk I blatantly plaigarized for this story.

Hope you enjoy!

“Come on, come on; we’ll miss them!”

“Oy, Hermione! Wait…” But it was too late. All it took was one second of lost eye contact, one unfortunate person crossing in the wrong direction, and the abnormally bushy head of Hermione Jane Granger disappeared from her father’s view. In a more typical family this would be cause for significant alarm – losing one’s child in a zoo being a recurring nightmare for most parents – but the Granger’s were not a typical family, and this was not the first time they had ‘lost’ their only daughter in the London Zoo. “I blame you for this, you know.” John Granger complained to his wife.

“I know you do, dear.” Sarah smiled right back. “But don’t forget who first read her Tarka.”

“Oh yeah…”

“And isn’t it nice to get outside occasionally?” She prodded.

John wrinkled his nose. “Sarah, my relationship with Outside is like a relationship with a jealous ex-girlfriend: I want the best for Outside, but I believe that we should keep our encounters brief, and rare.”

Sarah only chuckled at her husband’s behaviour as the two of them rounded the corner and spotted their daughter exactly where they both knew she’d be: in front of the otter exhibit, nose flat against the glass, hair spread out like some ridiculous halo.

Despite John’s personal disagreements with Outside, he could not for one moment deny how glad he was to see his daughter this way, this excited about something not printed on a page. John loved his daughter as much as any father could, and he could certainly not begrudge a love of books in anyone, but he did occasionally wonder if Hermione didn’t love books a little too much.

Sarah liked to say that their daughter “Lives in her head, and slightly to one side; her body is just a way of getting her head to breakfast.” John wouldn’t disagree with this, and didn’t necessarily consider it a bad thing – after all, his own parents frequently commented on how similar John had been to his daughter at that age – but he was becoming slightly concerned. Hermione seemed to prefer books to virtually all other pursuits: when asked, she would list her best friends as Mary Lennox, Lucy Pevensie, and Sherlock Holmes. At first, John and Sarah had chalked it up to being a relatively isolated child; the Grangers didn’t have many close friends of their own, and they had no other children, so young Hermione’s developmental years had mostly been spent indoors with naught but her parents and their extensive library for company. She would do better, they reasoned, once she was old enough to start school and spend time with other children her own age.

“Miss Potts rang yesterday.” His wife commented, seemingly reading his thoughts. Miss Potts was one of the supervisors at Hermione’s nursery school; she called about once every two weeks.

“What did she say?”

“The usual,” Sarah noted drily, “That Hermione doesn’t socialize, doesn’t participate in group activities, and doesn’t speak when spoken to.”

John sighed. This was nothing new. Every time she called, Miss Potts would give the same story: Hermione wasn’t interested in nursery school. After her first call, she had gently suggested that Hermione might be handicapped. John had looked over at his daughter then, reading The Lord of the Rings aloud, and had to laugh. When asked, Hermione merely said that she found the school boring and the other children immature.

“I’m worried about her.” Sarah admitted, sadly.

John was quiet for a long while, watching his daughter. It wasn’t right, he figured, for a little girl to prefer books to people. Books were nice, he had to admit, but there was something to the feeling of being connected to another human being. Even John Granger, admitted enthusiast of books and eschewer of Outside, had to admit to that.

Gradually, John found his attention shifting from the brown-haired girl he knew so well to the otters playing in their tank. He observed some otters ‘sunning’ themselves on the land, and watched them walk around awkwardly. They managed it all right, but it didn’t look natural – not where they belonged. Once they got in the water, though, it was a completely different story. Few things, as John had come to discover over the course of his life and his daughter’s recent obsession with the aquatic mammals, were as graceful as a swimming otter. They glided effortlessly through the water, seemingly for no other reason than because they could, and because it was fun. It was where they came alive.

The sound of his daughter’s voice brought his attention back to her, and he smiled. She was talking a mile-a-minute, the way he knew her to do at home, to some poor little sandy-haired boy who could only stare slack-jawed at her. She talked for maybe five minutes, not seeming to need to breath, extolling the virtues of the otter, the mythology of the otter, the beauty of the otter, and the everything-else of the otter.

John nudged his wife, and directed her attention to their daughter. Even Sarah had to smile at that. “I think she’ll turn out okay,” John said, finally addressing his wife’s fears. “She just needs to find something she’s passionate about, and find someone to share it with.”

12. Chapter 12

Took me a while to get this one up, too; sorry for that. Hope you all had a merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and any others you may celebrate that I missed, and a happy new year as well. Welcome to 2013, and congratulations on surviving the apocalypse two-and-a-bit weeks ago.

Today's prompt: 'How is your character with technology? Super savvy, or way behind the times? Letters or email?'

It's set an indeterminate time after Hogwarts, but no more than five years, and it's a little late-Christmas piece for you all. Enjoy!

Harry Potter loved Christmas, but it had not always been that way. As a child, it had been his least favourite day of the year; seeing all of the happy families celebrating the fact of each other; it made him reflect on his own Christmas memories, too terrible for polite conversation, and how much he dreamed of being part of something bigger than himself.

Hogwarts had changed that, and so had the Weasleys, but none of those wonderful days could compare to this, his first Christmas away from Hogwarts: Christmas Eve gifting in Hermione’s flat with his best and first friends.

“Hermione, what the bloody hell is this?”

“Watch your language, Ronald; there are children around.”

“Who, your landlady’s little shrimps? I bet they’ve heard much worse than me.”

“That’s no excuse.”

Harry laughed to himself and took a sip from the glass of wine Hermione had poured for him. He had missed this, spending time with his friends. Their lives had gotten dreadfully busy all of a sudden, once they left Hogwarts: Harry was working obscene hours during his Healer training at St. Mungo’s; Hermione was lost in a sea of paperwork in her capacity as a clerk in some obscure corner of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; Ron was buried up to his elbows in Auror training. It was an uncommon thing, and something he dearly missed, to just sit and be, like they had in the days before Voldemort. Even Ron and Hermione’s bickering seemed like music to Harry’s ears, so rare was it for him to see his two friends.

“Honestly, Harry.” Hermione sighed. “You shouldn’t be encouraging him.” Though she wore a look of exasperation, Harry could see her eyes smiling.

Still chuckling, Harry opted not to respond and instead opened the package Hermione had deposited in his lap at the beginning of the evening. From it tumbled a large plastic object, identical to the one that had so confused Ron moments before. “Hermione?” He asked, turning the object over in his hands and noting its resemblance to a muggle device he had seen at the Dursley’s but never himself used. “Is this a telephone?”

Hermione nodded vigorously, breaking into a very self-satisfied smile. “The muggles just started making them, they call it a mobile. You can use it anywhere in the world, not just your kitchen, and I made some modifications so they’ll work around magic.” She puffed up, clearly proud of her accomplishment, and Harry smiled at her, “I thought we could use them to keep in touch a bit better.”

Harry thought it was a very nice gift; he certainly appreciated the ability to contact his friends whenever he felt like it. However, judging by the suspicious looks Ron was throwing at his device, and the arm’s-reach he was keeping it at, the redhead did not feel the same way. “What do we need these for? Why can’t we just floo each other, like normal folk?”

Hermione deflated, but only a fraction; if he had been anyone else – if he had been Ron, for instance – Harry wouldn’t have noticed it, but he did, and he took it upon himself to stand up to their friend. “No, I think this is brilliant. Think about it, Ron: how often can you get enough free time to find a floo? About as often as I can, I bet.” The redhead nodded, conceding the point. “Thank you, Hermione.”

Hermione beamed at him, her happy look not even diminished when Ron muttered something that only vaguely sounded like gratitude. Harry felt very warm under her eyes, his heart doing funny things in his chest, until her mobile went off loudly. “Oh!” She exclaimed, flushing lightly and turning away from Harry’s eyes. “That must be Toby; I gave him one for his birthday, and…” She trailed off as she hurried out of the room to take the call from her new boyfriend.

The warmth in Harry’s body suddenly chilled, and he could even feel his face fall, reminded as he was of Hermione’s burgeoning relationship with Tobias Porter, a clerk in the Ludicrous Patents Office in the Ministry.

Ron, however, was oblivious to both Hermione’s sudden disappearance, and Harry’s very obvious reaction to it, all wrapped up as he was in the new ‘toy’ Hermione had given him. “Pass the wine bottle, would you Harry?” Harry did. “You know, this thing really isn’t all that bad.”

13. Chapter 13

Did everybody miss me? Did anybody miss me?

So it's been a long time. Sorry about that. I have to be honest, my interest in writing fanfiction has cooled over time, to the point where it's basically stagnated. However, I came across this story while I was doing some file cleaning, and I thought it had a lot of promise, so I'm going to try to finish it. I hope I can continue to live up to the level of quality you guys have come to expect of me.

Today's prompt is 'What does your characterâ€™s bed look like when he/she wakes up? Are the covers off one side of the bed, are they all curled around a pillow, sprawled everywhere? In what position might they sleep?' The answer may not be what you expect, but I thought it fit in pretty well.

Chronologically, this chapter takes place between one and two years after chapter 8. Enjoy!

â€œOW! Dammit, lumos. Fucking end-table.â€�

Harry Potter cursed violently as his want illuminated the piece of furniture that had so viciously assaulted his innocent foot. Remembering himself suddenly he quieted, listening to the stillness of the house and breathing a sigh of relief when he heard no stirring. Lord knows his girlfriend â€“ fiancee, he corrected himself â€“ had a hard enough job without being woken well before the crack of dawn by his blundering and sailor's tongue.

â€œI've got to talk to Ward about getting re-scheduled,â€� he muttered to himself as he padded up the stairs. Working the late-late shift at St. Mungo's, while rewarding in its own special ways, was not the best way to build a relationship â€“ especially not when one's future partner worked a 9-to-5 Ministry desk job. Such a schedule led to situations like tonight's, where Harry's clumsy arrival at 2 o'clock in the morning risked robbing his girlfriend â€“ fiancee â€“ of the three-or-so hours of blessed sleep she would have otherwise enjoyed.

Still, he reminded himself, his early arrival was not without perks, one of which he enjoyed with a wry grin as he gently nudged open the door o his â€“ their â€“ bedroom. It was an intimate moment, to see another person sleeping, but that wasn't what he enjoyed most about it. The reason he was glad of â€“ or, at least, less annoyed about - his late schedule was knowing that he was getting a rare glimpse of the woman behind the facade of proper perfection.

To the average persion, the woman lying in his â€“ their â€“ bed would have been unrecognizeable. There were certain characteristics that typically came to mind when describing Hermione Granger, neatness and propriety being high on the list.

Neither of these words could be fairly applied to the lump half-buried in bedsheets. A more accurate descriptor would be 'sheet-splosion,' for it truly looked as though a local tornado had touched down on the bed.

Hermione had managed to rotate herself nearly 180 degrees from where Harry knew she had started; a wild mane of brown hair falling over the foot of the bed betrayed the location of her head, while two bare legs were draped respectively over the headboard and one nightstand. How she was able to breathe was a mystery, as the sheets completely engulfed her head and upper body (aside from the previously-mentioned hair), leaving exposed only her charateristically-sensible white knickers and the hem of what he knew to be an old T-shirt of his.

Harry stifled a chuckle as he shed his medical robes, remebering the time he had come home to find that Hermione had rolled off the bed completely, and a few feet away, and wrapped herself in blankets like a caterpillar. It amused him endlessly how Hermione Granger, in waking life one of the most put-together people who ever lived, lost all sense of herself and her surroundings when she slept.

Working carefully so as not to wake her, Harry gently untangled his girlfriend â€“ fiancee â€“ from her nest and righted her in the bed, head on pillow where it belonged, before settling in himself. It may have been his imagination when he heard a mumbled â€œloveouâ€� from her direction, but he didn't hesitate to respond.

"Love you too."

Hermione's eyes were open the moment the clock struck 5, very surprised to find herself beneath neat blankets, with her head on a pillow. It was not typical; Hermione had always been a restless sleeper, and she would never forget the mortification she felt in her first year when her entire dormitory caught her crawling out from underneath her bed, where she had somehow managed to roll in the night.

But Hermione's surprise was only momentary: the solid warmth she was clinging to was enough to remind her of her recent move from her tiny, civil servant's flat to Harry's small house and, more importantly, Harry's bed. She smiled to herself, lightly kissing the bare shoulder that was presented to her, before she rose from the bed, careful not to wake her boyfriend â€“ fiancÃ© â€“ and prepared for the day.

It may haeve been her imagination when she heard a mumbled "loveou" from his direction, but she didn't hesitate to respond.