Hermione Granger

Bit by bit, Hermione has been easing down her responsibilities at the Lamplight over the past several weeks. While doing her best to maintain all of the inventory and services that people require for emergency reasons, Hermione's been deprioritizing some of the businesses she started up for fun alone. The tanks which once held dozens of pygmy puffs are now largely empty, save for the few that refused to be sold off to new owners, robust enough to hop around the store and occasionally coming around to nap on Hermione's shoulder.

In quiet afternoons like this, she appreciates their company, and in closing her eyes she can almost imagine herself being in Great Britain again, surrounded by friends and family.

But life in Darrow isn't lacking by any means, and today, Hermione only allows herself to doze off for the briefest of moments before she sits straight, hearing the poltergeist at the entrance get up in arms. It shrieks a few times, though whether in greeting or alarm Hermione can't quite tell. Either way, it's enough for Hermione to get to her feet, having previously been lounging in the soft rocking chair she's set up in the back of the shop to help her rest her feet.

"May I help you?" she asks, seeing the silhouette of a customer by the door, doing her best to blink the sleep out of her eyes.

For the past several weeks, calling Hermione a touch distracted at work would have been a generous description. While she still makes her way regularly to The Lamplight and keeps the same hours that she roughly has since its opening, much more of her time is spent behind the counter, sketching out potential courses and financial plans for opening up a school in Darrow. It's the type of work that keeps her energized in spite of the slight fatigue and nausea she's suffered from as of late, and it's a cause that she feels incredibly motivated by. If being in Darrow has taught her anything, it's the fact that learning is not something that ever ceases, no matter how much a person experiences.

She wouldn't have the world any other way.

Tapping a pen against her lower lip, Hermione jots down another couple names of people she's considering reaching out to for the school when the poltergeist suddenly lets out an excited chirp as a new customer enters the store.

Folding away her notebook, Hermione stands straight and smiles.

"Welcome to The Lamplight," she says, rounding the counter. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

As the sun began to deep from its early afternoon high, birds chirped as they flew through the woods, lingering around the Nook and watching curiously as people gathered from around the city. Flowers bloomed from the branches, uncharacteristically bright and large for the season, aided by a touch of magic. Not far from the house, a small babbling brook snaked through the fields, giving pets and wildlife alike the chance to run around and splash in a bit of water. The wedding decor had been designed to blend into the countryside, tables held up by tree trunks, and shade overhead provided by the stretch of vines and blossoms. The scent in the air was subtle and sweet, light floral mingling with the smell of baked goods wafting from the buffet table. At the end of the table stood a large cake, with white frosting and decorated with orange blossoms and clementines. If one looked closely enough, they would notice that one of the fruits was different than the rest, painted a subtle gold, and occasionally flying around the cake with a rapid beating of delicate wings.

The wedding was a small and intimate affair, meant to be more of a celebration than a formal occasion, and guests mingled with wine and cheer before the time came for the ceremony to begin.


Ron had felt as if he was going to lose his breakfast for most of the day. The truth was, he'd barely eaten at all that morning, anxious about the late afternoon ceremony. In some ways, it reminded him of ages ago, of his first Quidditch match as Keeper back at Hogwarts, his stomach was in knots, he felt peaky, and without realizing it that morning, he'd been so distracted by his own thoughts that he'd idly managed to cast a spell that left a small raincloud lingering over his head for nearly an hour before he managed to rid himself of it.

He knew that he was mental for it, for being worried about any of this. He and Hermione had been together ages now. They loved each other, and this was the next thing. There was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with that bloody amazing woman, but there was still the slightest bit of worry that she'd think better of it— of him— and tell him to sod off. He hadn't had thoughts like that, when it came to Hermione, in ages, but somehow it'd all come flooding back in the hours before the wedding.

Even standing there, waiting for her to walk down the aisle, he tried to push those thoughts away, tried not to look too nervous, like his stomach didn't feel like a crumpled bit of parchment. At least, if it all went sour, he only really knew a handful of people who'd turned up today. And Charlie wasn't George or Ginny, so he wouldn't give him too hard a time about it.

But the thing Ron didn't expect, standing there feeling like he might pass out, what he hadn't prepared himself for, was how she looked when he finally saw her. Because once he finally saw Hermione in her dress, walking toward him, this bloody amazing woman who'd chosen him when she could have had anyone, all the worry melted away. The parchment uncrumpled itself, and he was left grinning so hard he couldn't imagine ever being this happy again in his life.


All throughout the morning, Hermione's heart fluttered in her chest. Even as she listened to the guests mingling in the distance, there was something about the day that didn't feel quite real, even as she worked on zipping her dress and arranging her hair just so. While she had asked a guest or two for help on occasion, Hermione spent most of the morning preparing on her own, letting the enormity of everything that had led her and Ron to this point sink in. She had known, practically since their first year at Hogwarts, that Ron was a person whom Hermione would spend the rest of her years standing alongside. But the depth of what they felt for one another, the deepening of those emotions as they bloomed into something deeper and intangible, was something she never could have anticipated all of those years ago.

Now, she couldn't imagine wanting a single day away from him. As Hermione gazed in the mirror, she noticed how it softened her appearance. Her cheeks, dusted pink even without the help of blush. Quietly, she stole a moment to peek through the window, where Ron and Charlie were speaking in the distance. Everything about the day felt right. Everything was coming together, the final missing pieces of the puzzle.

By the time she made her way to the aisle, Hermione was already beaming, fingers trembling as they held onto her bouquet. Petals of light pink and orange lined the path she took, guests turned their heads to rest upon the bride, and sweet woodwind music played in the distance — but in the moment, Hermione only had eyes for Ron. As she came to a stop across from him, she reached a hand out to lace with his own, and silently murmured, I love you.


Ron had spent hours the day before trying to put the right words together, even though he knew that he was rubbish at that sort of thing. Reports, papers… mostly he just tried to get out of doing them, but this wasn't something Ron wanted to skive off. It was more important than almost anything.

In the end, he'd come up with something, and he'd written it out on a bit of parchment that he'd folded up and put in the pocket of his jacket, but he'd begun to think he wouldn't need it after all.

"Hermione, you've been my best friend, my teacher, my soul mate. You've managed to put up with me for over a decade now, and if you were going to think better of it, I s'pose you would've done it by now. Sometimes— right now, especially— I can't believe I've gotten this lucky. I love you, Hermione. You've been making me a better person since we first met, all those years ago as kids. And I promise that— that I'll keep working at it for as long as we're together, which is the rest of our lives, I hope. I promise we'll keep learning from each other, and that I'll always be there.

"A long time ago, I got lost, and it took a little ball of light to bring me back to you, to bring me home again. But I promise to never leave again. You're my home now, and you always will be."


As Hermione listened to Ron speak, she felt her chest grow tight and her eyes mist over, but she did her best to take the whole moment in, committing every detail to memory. The bright blue of Ron's eyes, as clear as the sky above. The way his hair caught the sunlight. The gentle brush of the wind as he spoke, grass waving merrily in the distance. She ducked her head for only a moment, smiling to herself, knowing that she could never forget the way that her heart felt right then, full to burst.

"As a child, I had always been somewhat of a precocious little thing. I knew how to consume books as though I was breathing air, and I kept my nose buried in them, day after day, like they were my entire world. But from the moment that you entered my life, Ron, you showed me that there was so much more to the world than what I could learn in the shelves of a library. You taught me the value of friendship, you showed me what true bravery meant. And what you taught me, above all else, is about love. What it's like to grow together, and what it's like to feel as though there's another person in the world who completes you. Who makes your world whole. Who shows you, every day, how life can be lived to its fullest.

"You say that you feel like you're lucky, but I feel like I've been the fortunate one to have found my soulmate so early in life. And I can't wait to spend the rest of that life with you."

Trembling hands relaxed as Hermione watched Ron slide the ring onto her finger, and she glanced up with a soft laugh. His warm arms wrapped around her, and Hermione pushed herself onto her toes, hand curling against his chest as she pressed her lips to his.


[ gathering for ronmione wedding! let us know if you're requesting ron, hermione, or both! tag in and be merry. ♥ ]

Hermione is accustomed to having the early spring season feel brisk. Even though it's already April, she doesn't step out of the house without first slipping into a thick peacoat, just in case the weather turns tumultuous and decides to change at the drop of a hat. In many ways, Darrow reminds her of the New England region of the United States — the structure of the government, the diversity of the population, and even the weather seems to be somewhat warmer than England.

With a couple of small jars of her bluebell flames in either pocket, Hermione goes about her errands, doing the grocery shopping for the household. Now that Ron is in Darrow, Hermione finds herself buying significantly more food, and also more prone to searching for some treats to light up dinners for him. A good meal puts him in an entirely different sort of mood, and Hermione simply enjoys seeing the smile on his face besides.

Even though she doesn't have much time to spare, the beauty of the crashing waves leads Hermione out to the beach. She sets down her bags, and a strong gust of wind brushes past her skin. Shivering, Hermione tugs one of the jars out from her pocket and surreptitiously tugs out her wand, sending a few more flames blooming in the glass.

That's when she spots it. A flash of orange flame off to the side, drawing her gaze immediately. Eyes wide, she forgets that her own blue flames are on display as she stares at a young man in the near vicinity, some sort of performer or illusionist — or perhaps someone with a little more ability than the average person — practicing forms off to the side.

It's beautiful and powerful, each swing of his arm purposeful, and the lick of the flames practically alive.

One of the aspects that Hermione best enjoyed about starting school at Hogwarts was all of the structure. Knowing exactly which textbooks and materials were needed to get her through the first year — at least, up until the philosopher's stone came into play — and having a schedule to get through day to day helped ground her and drew a clear road towards success.

In her goal of starting some type of magical institution in Darrow, one of the things Hermione has had the most trouble with is figuring out how to organize a curriculum that can be valuable to people with a wide range of different abilities.

But being unable to conceptualize the model doesn't mean she shouldn't try.

"Okay," she declares as she steps into The Lamplight, holding the door open for Lafayette and heading directly towards the widened back room. "I want for this session to be one where I understand what the inherent powers you have are. Consider it a stress test of a sort. All of the abilities that you've described to me are very situational, very contextual, and it becomes hard for me to assess which principles I should share with you or how you should practice."

Hermione sweeps her wand sharply across the room, drawing a curtain in front of the few cauldrons simmering at the perimeter of the room.

She glances sheepishly over her shoulder. "Does that sound okay?"

After the new year's debacle, Hermione has been doing a great deal of thinking. More and more, as she hears about the history of Darrow and sees the troubles that it experiences, she's started to believe that the people of Darrow need to be better informed about threats out there, or at the very least, to have some knowledge of how one might possible fend similar threats in the future.

Most of all, given what she saw of the people who were trying to help in the chaos, Hermione knows that the magic of those who are capable needs to be cultivated. Needs to be nurtured, and trained. Even if it comes at the risk of people using their powers for selfish reasons, Hermione prefers to have faith in the nature of mankind, one that's generally well-intentioned, and worth arming with a good defense.

How she plans on going about it is another story, and probably needs to start small. Hermione's tutored peers in the past, but almost all of them had an upbringing mired in magic. She can't assume the same level of familiarity here, and certainly not a similar foundation of knowledge.

Which is why she texted Lafayette, asking if she could speak with him briefly at his apartment. Now that she's at his doorstep, of course, she feels slightly more nervous about the topic at hand. But, if nothing else, he seems like a sensible man with a good head on his shoulders, and a decent person with whom to start.

Taking a deep breath, she knocks smartly on his door, loosening the scarf wrapped warmly around her neck.

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