Hogwarts, Gryffindor Tower.
Loren woke in his four-poster bed in the dormitory. The room was warm and comfortable, and the faint hooting of owls drifted in from outside. His roommate Seamus had studied until midnight and was still fast asleep in the neighboring bed.
He quietly slipped into the bathroom to wash up, then changed into his house robes.
The school actually did not provide hot water around the clock during winter. He would have to find a chance to report it to the headmaster.
When he left the dormitory, Hermione was already up. She sat on the sofa in the Common Room, flipping through recent issues of Transfiguration Magazine. Hearing his footsteps as he came downstairs, she looked up, her eyes curving as she gave him a faint smile.
"Good morning."
"A little too early..."
Loren yawned, then noticed her loose hair and frowned slightly.
"What is it?"
Hermione blinked. Since classes had not officially started yet, she had not done much with her hair after getting up, leaving it a little messy.
"Sit here and don't move."
Loren pressed a hand to her shoulder, took out the wooden comb he had not used in a long time, and began combing through her curly, fluffy hair. "Day after day, you can't even be bothered to tidy your hair. When you become Minister for Magic someday, you'll go to work every morning with this hairstyle, attend meetings looking all disheveled, go to the International Confederation of Wizards... The Daily Prophet will call you the Bird's-Nest Minister."
"Like the Spout Minister and the Horseshoe Minister?"
"Exactly."
Both nicknames referred to Minister Faris Spavin, the Minister for Magic of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. He had angered centaurs by saying the wrong things, then been kicked over by a hoof in public, earning