A Time For Heroes

Chapter 1: Convergence and Divulgence

Hermione was sitting at a small booth in a coffee shop just off Diagon Alley, and she was trying to do nothing more than sit there, minding her own business, trying to unwind after a stressful day.

If only everybody else in the coffee shop had similar plans.

She was a mess. She looked it and she felt it. Her normally neat black work robes were crumpled and tendrils of hair had escaped the bun tied tightly at the nape of her neck. Instead of framing her face charmingly, as they would on Ginny or Lavender or other women Hermione knew, the locks of hair flew all over the place, sticking out unpleasantly all over her head. Hermione scowled as she viewed herself on a mirror behind the counter, and irritably tried to press the uncooperative hairs back against her head. The moment she lifted her hand, it all sprang back into just the same shape.

Hermione sighed and tapped her fingers on the table, waiting for her waitress to come by with the coffee. She looked down at the table to avoid the mirror. She wished she could move so that she would not have to stare at it every time she looked up, but then she would be facing the street, and would be an easier target for the photographers.

Damn them.

She risked a quick glance behind her and was rewarded by the bright flash of a camera. She quickly turned around again, moaning and letting her head fall to the glass-topped table.

Her waitress came by just then. "Here you are, Hermione," she said kindly, placing the triple espresso down on the table by Hermione, who quickly lifted her head.

"Thank you," she said gratefully, taking the cup and taking a quick sip. "Why are you waiting tables, Lav?"

Lavender Brown smiled at her weary-looking customer. "I saw you out here," she confessed. "You look a little roughed-up, I wanted to know that you were okay."

Lavender was the owner of this coffee shop, and had enough famous friends to have created and enforced a strict policy of no photographers or reporters inside. Anybody could come in off-hours, of course, but the moment they took a picture or started grilling somebody who did not want to be interviewed, they were summarily thrown out and the Aurors were contacted.

This was the main reason that Hermione came here several times per week after work. Particularly today, when she neither wanted to go home to her empty flat nor have to deal with any reporters or eager gossips.

Hermione shook her head and pinched her temples, then took another sip of the coffee. "I'm... fine," she said eventually.

Lavender looked disbelieving.

Both of them were silent for a few moments, and Hermione knew that it was because Lavender was afraid of being an annoyance, but was also honestly worried for her friend. After several long moments, Lavender spoke.

"So how are you really?" she asked.

Hermione shrugged. "As well as can be expected," she said dully. "I really just need to be alone for a bit, I guess. Just... not alone at home."

If only she had complaints about work to fall back on, Hermione reflected crabbily, it would be something. But no, not a single reprieve.

Lavender nodded sympathetically. "Okay then, I'll head on back. If you feel like talking, though..."

"I'll let you know," Hermione assured her. She tried to smooth her hair over again, but knew it wouldn't do any good. "I think I'm going to need another coffee, though."

Her friend looked unsure, but nodded and gave a last smile and turned, walking back into a room behind the counter.

Hermione sagged, grabbing her cup and taking another sip of the strong, bitter espresso. She did not add any sugar or cream as she usually might. She felt like drinking something very bitter. It fit her mood. Hell, she thought, it fit her life.

Hermione did not usually indulge in self-pity. It was pointless. It achieved nothing except to make one depressed. Time was much more productively spent doing something to make the situation better. Time, she felt very firmly, was not to be wasted.

Voldemort had been defeated, she and her two best friends had made it out alive, the Death Eaters were all either killed, in Azkaban, or in hiding, she was alive and even had a good job that paid well and that she usually enjoyed.

I'm not dead, she reminded herself. I'm not trapped as a slave in an oppressive regime. Harry won. We won.

Yet sometimes it was really, really hard to keep things in perspective. And so Hermione sat there, draining her extremely bitter coffee, and feeling very sorry for herself.

She saw a shadow fall over her coffee cup, and looked up in displeasure, wondering who would be sitting across from her.

To her surprise, it was a stranger, with murky green eyes and long, light brown curly hair. Brown curly hair that, Hermione noted somewhat petulantly to herself, did not frizz out the way her own did, but instead stayed in tight tidy curls.

Upon second glance Hermione realized that this was not a stranger after all. The face was familiar. It was somebody she had seen at the Ministry, in her own department if she was not mistaken though not in her research group. Somebody with whom she had attended Hogwarts...

Finally something clicked and she managed to place a name to the face. Penelope! That was it. Penelope Clearwater. Percy had dated her at Hogwarts, once upon a time.

"Hello?" Hermione asked, somewhat ungraciously. After all, this woman had sat down uninvited across from somebody who clearly wanted to be left alone. Hermione did not feel a great inclination to be polite. Oh, sod it, she felt like screaming at Penelope to bloody go away, but she knew that creating a scene was one of the worst ideas possible right now. Not to mention that she simply did not have the energy.

"Hello," Penelope responded mildly. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but all of the other tables are taken."

Hermione looked around the room and found that to be true.

"Anyway," the woman across from her continued, "you looked lonely, and it's been a long time, Hermione. I thought we might catch up."

Now Hermione stared incredulously. While it was entirely possible that she looked lonely, she could not believe that it was possible to miss that she was in no mood to be disturbed. And what in gods' names did Penelope mean by a 'long time'? A long time since what? Catch up on what, for that matter? They had never been friends. Hermione could not even remember ever having spoken to the woman across from her.

She was the cordial, the well mannered, the proper Miss Granger. She was the one whom Minister Scrimgeour had practically begged to work directly with him as a public relations liaison (though she had refused in favor of sequestering herself off with other single-minded intellectuals to conduct research). She was the one who, after four straight hours of fighting, panting in exhaustion with a large bruise already turning the better part of her right cheek purple, more gashes across her body than she could count, had put on the diplomatic face for reporters and dutifully fielded their questions while Ron and Harry were off hugging each other and screaming cheerful obscenities in victory and sheer relief.

Hermione sourly decided that she did not feel like being polite. Admittedly, it had been her saving grace in the past. When she had managed to maintain her dignity in the face of scandals before it had been impressive to see how easily the public could accept some outrageous things. Yet she knew that it would not save her now, so why bother?

There were no reporters within hearing distance--well, no obvious reporters, anyway--and really, could there be such harm in speaking her mind, just this once?

"Actually, I was rather enjoying my respite from nosiness and gossips," Hermione said aloud.

Well, she thought, it perhaps was not scathing the way, for instance, Severus Snape could be, but at least her comment was pointed. Maybe. She hoped.

Penelope simply nodded, lightly agreeable, and said perhaps a bit too cautiously, "Understood. I won't say a word, I promise."

Hermione refrained from giving a disbelieving snort. A few moments later felt a rush of regret that she had indeed refrained, but by then it was too late to change her mind.

What had happened to her? Hermione was not meek, she had no doubt of that, and she had always been somewhat straight-laced, but when had she begun to be so concerned with decorum and public face? She had not shied from speaking her mind as a teenager. She could still remember the fiery pride she'd felt when she stood up to Umbridge her fifth year.

On the other hand, she thought glumly, neither had she stood by Harry and insisted that Voldemort had risen.

Lavender came by with another coffee, this one a less forceful latte, and placed it on the table.

"Is this woman bothering you, Hermione?" She asked with a pointed look.

While it could certainly be argued that Penelope's presence encroaching on Hermione's personal space was bothering her, she was pretty certain that the curly-haired woman was not a reporter. No matter how foul her mood, she could not bring herself to let a (somewhat) innocent bystander be hauled off by the Aurors simply for sitting down.

"No," she said. "It's fine. Penelope is... is a friend from work."

"Okay," Lavender sounded surprised. "What would you like, Penelope?"

"A cup of tea, please, and a blueberry scone."

Lavender wrote down the order and left. Hermione finished her espresso in one fast gulp, wincing at the taste. The action reminded her of quickly downing a shot of liquor, of the few episodes in which she had gotten absolutely plastered with Ron and Harry (and Ginny, but she didn't want to think about that just then). It had been a while. She knew that Ron and Harry got drunk a lot when she wasn't there, but she had never been much for inebriation, so they indulged with her rarely.

Tonight, Hermione decided, she was going to pick up a bottle of some kind of cheap, awful alcohol, and get horribly drunk, hangovers be damned. She had not taken a single sick day in the two years that she had been working with the Time Distortion Research Group, and only one in the previous three years working in the Department of Mysteries. She had only taken that one because she had been too ill to get out of bed.

She would not even have to fake her sickness, since she usually had quite terrible hangovers whenever she drank more than a glass of something. Right now she even rather fancied the idea of nausea--it would take her mind off of her life--though she knew that she would likely feel different in the morning whilst actually experiencing the result of her overindulgence.

One of the usual waitresses came over with Penelope's tea and scone. Hermione was surprised to realize that Penelope had been silent, as promised, but a quick glance up confirmed that she was gazing at Hermione in interest and sympathy.

Hermione hated sympathy. She simply could not be angry with somebody for being sympathetic, yet that person inevitably brought up topics she would just as soon avoid. Yet she couldn't respond in anger because after all, they only cared about her.

There wasn't any reason for Penelope to care about her, and now that Hermione remembered that she was not alone the silence became first awkward, then oppressive.

So, with a defeated sigh, she said in clipped tones, "I gather you've been reading the newspaper?"

Penelope raised her eyebrows, as though to say, 'What, are you talking to me?', but nevertheless answered in a genuinely apologetic tone. "I try not to listen to gossip, but I need to keep up with the news, and the front-page articles with large headlines are a bit hard to miss."

"Yes, I suppose they would be," Hermione murmured, cupping her mug and staring into her black coffee. She didn't mean to say anything else, yet she found more words coming out of her mouth: "Why can't they at least relegate me to a nice gossip column near the back, that only socialites will bother to read?"

"True heroes are rare," Penelope said softly. "You can't blame people for being fascinated."

"I can't blame people for invading my privacy and sprawling my personal business across the front page of the most widely-read newspaper in the country?" Despite the bitter words her voice was mild. It was habit not to get too riled up anymore, as she had discovered that the moment one shows emotion is usually the moment everybody else becomes interested in the drama and entirely forgets about the one. Hermione would not stand for being considered trivial. "Perhaps not, but I also can't help being resentful."

"Understandable," Penelope said.

Hermione took a sip of the sugarless, creamless coffee and let out something halfway between a laugh and a sob before she covered her mouth and took a moment to pull herself together. "It's a miracle that nothing has leaked about my job all these years," she said.

"Yes, well, there are some pretty heavy magical precautions against that," Penelope pointed out.

"If only I could get clearance to use those to protect my own secrets."

"You don't really want that, do you? If you could use those, anybody could--and think of some of the things that people could hide. Dark magic, criminal--"

"I know, Penelope," Hermione said tightly, trying to keep herself calm.

Penelope looked suitably abashed. "Sorry."

Hermione tried not to notice how much Penelope's earnest explanation mirrored her own responses in similar situations, but failed.

"Bloody hell, don't you ever give it a rest?"

"I'm only saying--"

"I know what you're saying, Hermione. I'm not two! Sometimes people like to bitch about things. I'm sorry, is that too vulgar for you? People complain, and we don't need to be corrected on every little detail in the middle of it!"

"I thought you would want to know why it works that way!"

"I know why! I was just angry! Everybody isn't always so cold and rational all the time like you are! Some people have emotions!"

"Ginny, that's not fair!"

"It's not supposed to be fair! That's the point!"

Hermione gave herself a little shake and took a sip of her coffee to clear her head. She glanced over at Penelope, who was meekly picking at her scone.

Hermione hated it when people played with their food.

Ginny had done it all the time and it drove her bonkers. She would be making little faces with syrup in her oatmeal or volcanoes with mashed potatoes and Hermione simply had to look away in order to restrain herself from leaping across the table and forcing the other woman to just eat the bloody food.

So why the hell did she miss it now?

She sighed. "It's okay," she said. "I know you're right. It's just hard, when completel strangers are privy to things that most people can just take for granted are private, and I can't talk about the things that really interest me but don't have so much emotional baggage."

"Well," Penelope said timidly, "I can relate to the second bit, anyway."

"Yes." Another sip of the coffee. It was almost finished, but there were already the beginning twinges of a caffeine headache, so she should not have any more. Hermione's voice was quiet now, and held none of the previous constrained hostility. "Yes, I suppose you can."

"It's strange," Penelope continued after a moment, "because for me, when something terrible happens--when somebody who I love has died, or my heart has been broken--and people greet me, cheerfully smiling, it seems unthinkable that everyone I meet doesn't realize that the world has ended."

"I wouldn't know." But Hermione's voice wasn't angry, or bitter, it was simply wistful. "I became friends with Harry only a few months after I entered the wizarding world. At first it was mostly him, but most of what happened to him also happened to me, in a way, as he was my best friend. And my very first romantic encounter was chronicled by Rita Skeeter in the Daily Prophet."

Penelope nodded. "I remember."

Hermione drained the last of her coffee, then placed the mug firmly back on the table and abruptly changed the subject. "So," she said, "you said you wanted to catch up. What is happening in your life? The last thing I remember, you were dating Percy Weasley."

Penelope's eyes widened. "Wow," she said, stunned. "Wow. That was... so long ago."

Hermione murmured an agreement. "That it was."

"I haven't even spoken to Percy in years. We broke up a couple of years after we left Hogwarts. Over seven years ago, now." She paused. "Seven years. Wow," she repeated. "It's been more than nine years since I've been in Hogwarts."

"Just over five for me, and even that's a weird thought. Like it's impossible to believe that I've been gone from there for so long, like I was there yesterday, but at the same time it's like something from... a different lifetime."

"I can't imagine what it was like, for you," breathed Penelope, "facing He Who--I mean, Voldemort," she corrected herself with a blush, "every year, since you were eleven! Hogwarts seems distant for me, but you just lived under this--this shadow there."

"Well, everybody did," Hermione demurred.

"Nobody else felt the responsibility for protecting the world against it on their shoulders."

"Well." Hermione felt a blush creeping up on her. She had heard this before, but not from a person, not from somebody who felt real, and she felt surprisingly embarrassed. "As you said. It began almost the moment I entered Hogwarts. I'm Muggleborn, remember. It just all seemed to be part of this world for me."

"But it isn't anymore."

"I guess not." Hermione knew it, in her mind, but yet--

"It still feels like there's this darkness creeping up, doesn't it?" Penelope asked.

Yes. Exactly. "Yes," Hermione whispered emotionally. Then she recovered herself. "Well, I devote myself to my work."

"Then can't talk about it." There was a beat, and then: "If you ever want to tell me about what you're working on, I'd be fascinated."

Hermione unexpectedly found herself smiling for a moment. "I guess that is allowed, isn't it."

"We both have the clearance. I'm surprised Harry and Ron don't, actually. I'm sure if you spoke with the Minister he would lift the restrictions for Harry."

"Harry wouldn't be interested," Hermione said simply. That is, if she ever spoke to him again, which at the moment was less than assured.

"Oh." Penelope shifted uncomfortably. "That's why I like my job--it's nice to be surrounded by people at work who don't find your interests boring. Even in Ravenclaw, people cared about schoolwork, but my obsession with astronomy was pretty boring to everybody."

That cinched it; they could talk about work, and furthermore nobody was eavesdropping on their conversation (well, somebody might be, but that person would have to be too stupid to understand that hint). Otherwise, Penelope wouldn't have been able to mention astronomy in conjunction with her job.

"I'd have thought that Percy, at least, wouldn't be bored by it. He seemed to be pretty incapable of boredom."

Penelope shook her head and laughed. "No, actually, he wasn't interested at all. He could be a bit full of himself, really."

Hermione was not surprised in the slightest to hear that. "Still, considering how focused he could be on the most mind numbingly dull things..."

"A lot of people would find your work, or mine, incredibly dull," argued Penelope. "He just had his own interests, that's all. Some people are just fascinated by... cauldron bottoms." She and Hermione looked at each other for a moment, and simultaneously broke out into giggles. "Okay, maybe not. He was fascinated by his opportunities for career advancement."

Hermione realized in shock that she was actually somewhat enjoying herself. "So, it's been seven years. Any social life since then?"

Penelope wrinkled her nose. "Well, of course some," she said, "but it never really seems to work out."

Hermione gave a half smile and looked over to the mirror again. Her hair was still just as much in frizzy disarray as before, if not more so. Her clothing was still disheveled. Gods above, she missed Ginny.

She unexpectedly felt someone touch her, and she looked back to see that Penelope had placed her hand on Hermione's. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it's no comfort now, but it gets easier. The pain goes away."

Hermione knew it intellectually, but sort like the way the rest of her couldn't quite believe that Voldemort was gone, it also couldn't quite believe that the pain would be. "How about the awkwardness?" She asked with a dark sort of humor.

Penelope squeezed Hermione's hand, then pulled her own away to give the other woman her space. "Admittedly, your situation is more fraught with, er... conflicts of interest... than any of mine."

Hermione could not quite keep a bleak look off of her face. "I don't think somebody could alienate me from all my friends more effectively if they planned it. My girlfriend, sister to one of my best friends, hell, member of the only family I have in this world--she leaves me for my other best friend. In one fell swoop, it is awkward for absolutely everybody."

Where was the calm, the collected Miss Hermione Granger now? One little push and she was spilling her guts to someone who was for all intent and purposes a stranger. Not to mention that she'd better start praying very hard to whatever gods might possibly exist that there weren't any reporters listening in on this conversation.

She was an atheist, she remembered. Damn.

"They love you," Penelope said. "It'll be okay. Have some faith in them."

"It would be a whole lot easier if I weren't in a bloody fishbowl." She wanted to speak her mind, well, now she was. Be careful what you wish for, they said.

(She wished for the pain to go away. Or for Ginny to come back. Or both.)

"Penelope," she said wearily as she pulled out a few sickles and set them down on the table to pay for her coffee, "I have decided to get completely, obscenely drunk tonight. I think I could do with some company. Would you like to join me?"

Penelope grinned, finishing up her coffee and leaving half of the scone lying on her plate as she reached into her own pocket to throw some silver coins onto the table. "Now that sounds like a marvelous idea."

"Brilliant."

Hermione had almost managed to forget about the photographers. Incredibly, a couple of them had stationed themselves outside of the café the entire time and began snapping pictures the moment she turned around.

"Ah, Penelope," she began.

"Penny, please," the woman insisted with a smile.

"Penny, then," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "would you mind going to the liquor store for me? I don't particularly want pictures of me cradling alcohol on the front page of tomorrow's Daily Prophet. I'll pay you back later. You can get to be through Floo, just say 'Hermione's Flat'."

"Not a problem," Penny agreed. "I'll catch up with you in an hour? I should stop by my flat first anyway."

"Great."

Hermione futilely ran her fingers over her hair to tidy it, brushed off her robe to make it look more presentable, and set her face in a pleasant but neutral expression. Then, with a quick grimace towards Penelope, she pushed the door opened and faced the flashing lights, refusing to look at them and firmly but mildly insisting, "No comment."