"Almost," Hermione admitted, idly rubbing the bridge of her nose. "It was getting rather tiresome by the end of the day. You'd think that if word travels so fast in that place, they might have caught on that I didn't know anything by at least 2 o'clock." Shaking her head in bemusement, she reached for her own wine glass and took a sip before returning it to the table.
It was obvious Ron expected too much of himself. She didn't know who wouldn't have trouble finding something to say, when they'd been at their job less than a week and something as dire as losing five Aurors had happened. "I'm sure you did perfectly fine," she assured him. "You don't have to answer to them anyway, and I doubt anything you could have said would have made a difference."
Hermione had learned that much, over the years. Once people had a certain idea in their head, it was usually quite hard to sway them. Even if they did get information from a perceived authority figure such as Ron, or even the Daily Prophet, they only took what they wanted; what suited them, and discarded the rest.
She smiled back at him as he clarified that he was sorry for whinging, and gave a small shrug. "If you can't whinge to your friends, who can you whinge to?" Swallowing the last of her wine as Ron turned back to the food, Hermione poured the remains of the bottle into her glass. She realised somewhere in the back of her mind that this was her third, but since it was obviously her last since they had finished off the bottle, she didn't let that worry her.
"I'll tell you what," she said as Ron held up his chicken, "I'll swap you." Retrieving her chopsticks, Hermione held out her own container and arched an eyebrow. It almost felt like it used to, before everything had seemingly turned upside down, and she found herself quite pleased that Ginny and Harry had chosen tonight to take over the flat.