Harry Potter One-shots

Strictly business (Harry)

Early mornings were despised by many, young and old, and you really could not blame them. Who had been so insensitive as to vote on this?

You never really had been keen on waking up this early, not when you were a teenager and surely not now that you are a young adult. You could never sleep early, and with the war passing, you had just another reason to not be able to. Night terrors plagued your unsteady, emotional and weak state, making you unable to sleep fully and get some rest.

When you were younger, you kept telling to yourself that one day, when you would be out of school, you would sleep endless hours without having anyone to disrupt your sweet dreams. That plan had proved to have quite many flaws. For one, you had no sweet dreams, and your nightmares woke you up all the time, meaning that you did not enjoy endless hours of sleep. Not to mention that you had to wake up early in order to go to the Ministry. You could not just let your work fall behind.

You had a nice job in the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and truthfully, it was not all that bad. The Head of the Department had appointed you the leader of your cooperations with America, and you met quite frequently with some Americans to continue establishing your nation's good graces. One could call it boring, but then again, you had already earned a trip to New York thanks to your position. It was not that bad.

Which was the reason why you had to wake up early that particular morning. You groaned as you left your bed and made your way slowly to your wardrobe. You grabbed a pair of undergarments and without further ado, made your way to the bathroom. You took off your pajamas and stepped in the shower. You drew the curtains closed and opened the taps.

A loud scream left your lips at the freezing cold water that fell on your body, and you immediately closed the taps, your eyes wide open in bewilderment. You were no longer asleep, the water had taken care of that. You let out a loud groan as you adjusted the water to a warmer temperature and then opened the taps, hesitantly and cautiously getting under the warm water. What a foul and barbaric way to start your day.

You took a short shower and then closed the taps and drew the curtains open. You grabbed a towel and started drying yourself off, while looking at your reflection in the mirror. You were quite surprised you had no dark bags under your eyes from your lack of sleep. Not that one would be able to take notice of that. The dark complexity of your skin would not let them see much.

You put on your undergarments and then made your way back to your bedroom in order to choose something formal and respectable to wear. You chose a black skirt that reached your knees and a canary yellow shirt. You put your clothes on and then made your way to the place you kept your shoes and grabbed a pair of black high heels. You put them on and made your way to the mirror, a small frown on your face. What it was that you really hated about your job was the fact that you had to wear formal clothes and put on make up. Every student back at Hogwarts would say that you had never put make up on your face, and skirts and high heels had practically never been words in your vocabulary until now.

It was a job that had changed you, you thought to yourself as you applied some mascara on your dark eyelashes. You simply could not forget the look of surprise on Seamus' face the first time he had seen you when you were at work. Despite you being a Hufflepuff, the two of you had been best friends back in your younger years, and the change had left him speechless. You could not really blame him.

After the war, it was safe to say that you had changed. You were no longer the girl that ran around all the time, the girl that was clumsy had seemingly died. Along with your forced change in clothing, you had changed the way you carried yourself around as well. You had also decided to cut your hair, leaving it short, like a man would. It had been a shock at first, abandoning your long hair that reached well below your waist, but you had come to terms with that, eventually.