Yes, Sir

Lesson 3: Patience.

The days leading up to her arrival at Hogwarts were as busy as they were lonely. 

Hermione had far more loose ends to tie up than she initially realised, and it turned out to be rather much more work than she had anticipated. Her parent's house had been on the muggle housing market for months, with few viewings and little interest. In Hermione's opinion the house was perfect, and she couldn't understand why it hadn't been sold already. She found it incredibly hard to believe that there wasn't a middle class family out there, looking for a 3 bedroomed detached house in the London suburb of Hamstead. Her estate agent had reassured Hermione that the lack of interest was due to the current economy, inflation and what not. Hermione spent enough time reading The Daily Mail and The Times to know all about the latest shit-show of a muggle government, and could understand the delay.

Her own property, a rented flat in Bromley (on the outskirts of London), had been much easier to get rid of. She had simply handed in her 8 weeks notice to the landlord, and began boxing up her things. 

However simple in theory, packing up a house was much more difficult in practice. 

Hermione had no idea how big her rooms would be in Hogwarts. Quite frankly, she had never seen a teacher's qaurters. The Headmaster had given her no information as to where in the castle she might be staying, how her rooms might be furnished, or what she may need to bring with her. Assuming that she would have no need for kitchen appliances, cutlery or crockery, Hermione started there. 

Given that most of her belongings had been taken from her parents house when Hermione had bought the flat after The War, it was incredibly difficult to part with things. It seemed silly to be emotionally attached to dinnerware and such, but Hermione had grown up eating off of her mother's Beatrix Potter hand-painted plates, and drinking tea from her Jemima Puddleduck mug. It was the only part of her parents that she had left. Hermione had shed a tear when she watched the first charity donations van disappear down the street. 

Her piles and piles of books posed another problem.  

An undetectable extension charm would handle the transportation aspect, but Hermione was concerned about shelf space in her new quarters. It took her a whole day to sift through her collection, sorting through what was essential and what was not. Her magical textbooks were non-negotiable. Her muggle classics however, could be held in storage until she figured out what to do with them. She would take a few titles with her. She was human after all. Hermione wrapped her battered and well-loved copies of Little Women, Jayne Eyre, Wuthering Heights ect, tenderly in brown paper and placed them in a box marked fragile. Those were the books she liked to re-read whenever she needed a distraction from life - which turned out to be quite frequently. 

Upon revision, Hermione told herself that there would be a well tendered magical library, in which she would have access to all of the magical textbooks she might ever need. Taking her own copies seemed imprudent, and it would allow her to have more space for her personal collection. After much deliberation, however, Hermione decided that sharing textbooks with the rest of the study body and teaching staff would be intolerable. She hated sticky pages and phallic doodles as much as Madame Pince, the Hogwarts Librarian. 

All in all, Hermione found herself craving distraction. Starting a job that involved uprooting one's life was an incredibly big change. Gargantuan, actually. Teaching at Hogwart's meant losing her personal life. Hermione would no longer be able to swan off to London on whim, to see her friends or participate in her favorite kind of therapy - retail. The Professors were always on duty, The Headmaster had stressed. There would be no escaping the responsibilities of shaping the new generation, without pre-arranged leave, of course. Even then, Hermione would still be expected to observe term times. Personal leave was not often granted when school was in session, although she was allowed one weekend off a month. Maintaining a professional facade was expected at all times, and Hermione knew that this would get very tiring, very quickly.