An Education.

By Oriondruid

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Summary: After the war much needed rebuilding and 'set moving' again, including the lives of Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. This is a short, one-shot tale of that time of reconstruction and 'beginning again'.

Disclaimer: With regard to the following story, the characters and settings in this story belong entirely to the works and 'world' created by J.K. Rowling and I am grateful that she so kindly allows us, her fans, to enter her world and 'play' for a while. This is an entirely amateur work and not for profit.

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Setting: The rear garden of 12 Grimauld Place, London.

Hermione and Ron were sat relaxing in deck chairs, enjoying a glass of cold white wine in the warm early summer sunshine and talking about their future following the victory at the Battle of Hogwarts...

"No way, I'm not going back to bloody school Hermione, and neither's Harry! Not while there's still renegade Death Eaters out there on the run and we've been offered jobs as Trainee Aurors by Kingsley. We'll be getting to graduate to NEWT equivalent level anyway." Ron replied to Hermione's question vigorously.

His girlfriend stared at Ronald looking a little sad, but was not too surprised he would not return to school with her to finish their disrupted education as she'd asked. After all, what he said was correct in any case, because Ron and Harry would be given extra courses whilst training as Aurors, in order to make up any shortfalls or gaps in their knowledge, and on graduation as qualified Aurors would also receive their NEWTS certificates. Hermione fully understood this, but was a little sad that both her boyfriend and her other best male friend wouldn't be attending the temporary magical school in London with her. This had been set up whilst Hogwarts was still undergoing major structural repairs following the Battle and was intended to allow students from the disrupted time that the Carrows and their fellow Death Eaters had ruled Hogwarts with a reign of terror to learn properly the subjects which their 'education' under the evil regime had badly distorted.

Smiling wistfully she leaned over and kissed Ron tenderly, saying, "It's OK love, I understand, you're different from me and were never a great lover of school and such anyway, your a true Gryffindor, a man of action, not books. Just like Harry you'd hate being stuck back into a classroom after all we went through. But you can't blame a girl for trying and it was worth asking anyway." She grinned.

Hermione went on, saying; "Well at least I'll have Ginny with me and lots of the other members of the DA and our surviving old school friends will be with us as well, so we'll be fine. In any case the temporary school is only a day school, not boarding type set up. It's in an 'apparently' empty muggle warehouse in the East End near the Thames, that's been magically adapted for the purpose. The younger pupils Floo in from home and we final year pupils are all old enough to Apparate legally now anyway, so we can live where we like when we're not at school. I'll be staying with Luna helping her complete the repairs and redecoration at the Rook House, whilst her Dad's in St. Mungo's getting over his stroke. But I'm sure that we'll often be able to get together at weekends and some weekday evenings too, at Grimauld Place and The Burrow. So it won't be too much of a wrench being back at school and we'll see each other whenever we're not studying or training."

The couple stood up and before heading back into the kitchen where Kreacher was getting a late lunch ready Ron took Hermione into his arms and kissed her again, replying; "It's so good of you to understand Hermione, you know I'd go bonkers stuck back in a classroom all the time, knowing there's still loads of 'baddies' out there that need catching, and that goes for Harry too. Kingsley's promised us an accelerated training course, plus a lot of 'practical work', we'll be joining in on real Auror actions since they're short staffed due to war casualties. He said we'd already got all the combat training we needed in the DA, in the Ministry fight and at the Battle of Hogwarts anyway, and so he's not worried about us being able to 'look after ourselves' in a 'scrap' as long as we're properly supervised. But don't think it'll all be charging around dodging curses and chasing Death Eaters all the time, me an' Harry won't be getting out of studying entirely as we'll have a lot of legal and procedural 'stuff' to learn so sadly we will both be stuck in classroom chairs and reading books part of the time too. Not my 'cup of tea' as you know, but something we'll have to do, so it'll be 'noses to the grindstone' for me an' Harry as well."

Ronald grinned at his girlfriend and she smiled back at him, perhaps a little smugly, relishing the vision his words had summoned, one of Harry and Ron struggling through books on Wizarding Law and scratching their heads over their meaning.

"Perhaps it's a good thing those two are going off to study separately after all." Hermione thought to herself. "Cos I'd only have got stuck with doing their 'homework' again anyway!"