"Nothing ages more quickly as news." Walking in the great hall on the morning of her 18th birthday. birthday, Hermione suddenly remembered her husband saying so. She first had not believed him, but as she now sat down on her place at the Gryffindor table, she found that he'd been right again. Her entrance didn't cause looks and whispering anymore - the sensation of having a head girl - and yes, she still wore the badge because Minerva had a swift "I would want to see someone daring to accuse Albus of nepotism!" refused to take it back - married to the headmaster had ebbed away. And actually, Hermione thought, this didn't only concern her school mates, but Hermione herself too. After only eight days of marriage a certain routine had settled in - a routine, on the first sight so perfectly satisfying, that even Harry, after Hermione had told him about it in a long talk, didn't look worried at her anymore. He'd even said: "I'm glad this ..." he still had a problem with the word 'marriage' connected to the living arrangement his best friend and the headmaster, "works so well for you."
Only Hermione wasn't 'glad'. She blamed herself heavily for not feeling so, she argued with herself, she even named herself an 'ungrateful bitch', she kept telling herself that living with Albus Dumbledore was certainly not worse than living, often lonely in the head girl's chamber, that it sometimes even was more fun and laughter as she had have in years for Albus was not only kind and treating her with more courtesy as she could ever have got from a boy her age, but he was mostly cheerful and he obviously likes to spoil her with flowers and gifts.
Yet these gifts, Hermione thought, showed just the problem she was chewin because after his first one - the study with the wonderful little library - she'd never got something she found suited her. In moments of feeling sarcastic - and Hermione had have so much of them over the last days she already believed that spending pretty much time in the always acerbic potion master's company already hubbeubbed off on her - Hermione rather felt as if her husband would work himself through a 'How to make my witch happy' book of the rather cheap sort because the witches this book knew about were obviously the Lavender Browns or Narcissa Malfoys of this world - women only interested in her appearance and measuring their husband's affection on the money he spend on their gifts.
Yet Hermione Granger wasn't interested much in Parisian dress robes - though she'd admit that the one she had found just this morning on her bedside, decorated with a note saying "Happy birthday and have a nice party" - It was rather a glorious piece. If she'd wear it after using the 'witch's very dream' hair potion (the gift she'd got at the morning before and it was a rather beautiful vial it was in), perfumed with 'Enchante de Paris' (out of a truly lovely glass flagon which had appeared at her potion notes as she'd opened them in her study only two days before) and with the necklace (opals and diamonds again, suiting her ring) Albus had given her on the evening after the attack, she certainly would make a stunning impression. Perhaps this was what he wanted? Hermione didn't know, but she knew that in this sector she wouldn't even try. She was Hermione Granger, the bushy haired Gryffindor bookworm with ink spots on her finger, a quill in her hair and academic challenges in her mind - and if this Hermione Granger didn't suit Albus Dumbledore's ideas about his wife, she couldn't help it.
She remembered only too well that she'd promised to respect him - and yes, this certainly meant she had to try fulfilling his wishes too, but he'd promised the same to her - and she couldn't remember she'd heard something like "respect her if she changes to become a creation of yours". The very idea of doing so made her furious - so furious she sometimes wanted to shout at him. Only she didn't dare - and not only because he still was not only her husband, but the headmaster she'd learned to adore and to respect more as ever than any other living soul, but because she knew herself too well. If she'd break through the barrier their mutual politeness had built between them, she wouldn't stop at telling him that she disliked being treat as she'd got no brain, but she'd probably even tell him that she'd almost wished him back on his sickbed because by then she'd felt close to him.
