A loud POP sounded outside Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The door was immediately flung open and the entry was filled with the anxious faces of Harry and too many red heads that quickly contorted to shock at what they found on the front step. Hermione swayed under the weight of Tonk's unconscious, pregnant form. Both women were covered in blood and it was impossible to tell whether it was from their own injuries or others'. Shaking, Hermione opened her mouth but couldn't seem to say anything. Her eyes were opened wide, at once frantic and dazzed but not looking at anyone inside. For a second they were all suspended in horror until Hermione swayed too much and then one of the Weasley twins was catching her as Bill and Harry caught Tonks and they were all tugged inside.

Hermione never actually passed out. She watched as the Healer worked above her, fixing the cuts, bruises, and traces of dark magic left in her system, all the while telling her anecdotes about his life in Tibet. He reminded her vaguely of Dumbledore, with the perpetual twinkle in his eye and the way in which his stories seemed at once philosophical and nonsensical. She thought it was strange that he kept talking to her. She still hadn't spoken and had no intention of doing so. Her brain and her voice seemed to be stuck back in the other place despite the fact that her eyes and ears were still functioning. She wondered if you could splinch away a part of your brain and if the part of her brain that allowed her to function and interact with the world was still lying back in the pools of blood along with the rest of the mess.

As soon as Healer Tenzin finished with Hermione and left her room she pushed herself off the bed and walked out after him. In the hallway she found Harry and Mrs. Weasley talking softly to the Healer. All three looked up and the pain in Mrs. Weasley's eyes felt like a serrated knife opening her wounds all over again. She turned away and climbed up the stairs to the secluded attic room were Buckbeak was still living. She had been shaking so bad that when she tried to fold her torso over into a bow to the hippogriff she collapsed on her knees. Tears poured down her cheeks and tremendous sobs rocked her entire body to the point she felt that she would tear her throat with them. Buckbeak was startled but seemed to understand the severity of the situation. He bent his head down to her in his own formal bow but also moved forward so that his immense forehead rested softly upon her shoulder. He remained there for a few of Hermione's sobs and then knelt all the way down so that he was facing her and she could hold onto his neck while his head rested upon her shoulder. The compassion of the proud creature drew even more sobs from Hermione. They came tearing out of her throat from somewhere deep in her chest cavity.

Hermione didn't know how much more grief she could take. So far they had all been considering this war in the same way, and they had been losing. They were being led by Kingsley and Kingsley was a soldier. Moody had been a soldier. Everyone had been approaching it as a soldier. Even now that they had brought in support from different countries and had people with vastly different backgrounds supporting their effort they were still all approaching it in the same way. Hermione thought about Healer Tenzin and how quite and unassuming he was during Order meetings but how commanding and attentive he was when practicing medicine. She wondered how he would approach their problem. When a disease strikes and the medicine you apply does nothing to curb it you have to change treatments not frantically apply more of the useless drug. Buckbeak nuzzled her hair with his beak and Hermione blinked. She pulled away from the hippogriff so that she could look him in his wide yellow eyes. He stared back at her solemnly. Hermione breathed as she maintained his gaze. Her emotions began to settle like silt and the waters of her consciousness cleared. At the back of her mind the tingling beginning of an idea started to form.

Although she had caught hold of a flicker of an idea that could maybe lead to a glimmer of hope everything was uncertain and she didn't know where to begin. Hell, Hermione didn't even know how she would bring herself to leave the room with Buckbeak. How could she face everyone? How could she see the grief of the Weasley's and Harry without becoming consumed by her own? She knew that somewhere downstairs Tonks was lying in a bed. Hermione hoped she was still unconscious. She didn't know if she had done the right thing by dragging Tonks out of there. Remus had taken the brunt of the slicing curse from Dolohov in order to protect his pregnant wife. Some of it had still hit Tonks though. She was incapacitated, trying to stem the bleeding of the gash that had opened across her torso, threatening the tiny life beating beneath the stretched skin of her abdomen, and sobbing at the sight of her husband's lifeless body. In that moment both Ron and Hermione had zeroed in on Tonks. They were both battling their own sets of Deatheaters but suddenly nothing was as important as the fact that Remus was dead and Tonks and her baby were about to die.

As the killing curse was shouted by one of the masks both Ron and Hermione leapt for Tonks. Ron got there first. There was no time to think. The moment after the curse collided with Ron's body Hermione reached Tonks and disapparated. She had appeared a second later on the steps of Grimmauld Place stumbling under Tonk's unconscious weight. No one had asked her questions when they pulled her inside. Six people had gone out. Two had come back. Hermione hadn't known the others.

She didn't know how much time had passed in Buckbeak's room. At some point the hippogriff had moved so that his great torso was perpendicular to her. She leaned against him and let her head and arms rest on his back. There was a soft knocking at the door. Hermione did nothing. Whoever it was she probably didn't want to speak to them. She heard the door open and felt Buckbeak's head turn to watch the visitor. Since he relaxed Hermione assumed whoever it was had satisfied him with their bow.

Soft footsteps circled around her and the hippogriff until a pair of pale feet and calves came into Hermione's view. They sank down as the girl sat to reveal a cotton blue dress and a waterfall of pale blond wisps. Luna buried one hand in Buckbeak's feathers and the other in Hermione's curls. Hermione didn't lift her head so she couldn't see any expression but she felt the soothing, reassuring caress of Luna's fingers.

She said nothing. Luna waited. Hermione hadn't expected Luna. She had assumed it would be Harry or one of the Weasleys at the door, one of those people who would have felt obligated to check on her after a certain point. Hermione was relieved it wasn't. Despite her odd ways Luna was an unobtrusive, undemanding presence. Hermione didn't feel the need to pretend around Luna because the girl was so comfortable with her own oddities that the only thing it seemed right to offer her was equal plain-faced honesty. She hadn't asked Hermione any questions either. She simply joined her and the hippogriff on the floor and Hermione and Buckbeak both relaxed into the steady rhythm of Luna's strokes.

"I don't know how to leave." Hermione finally croaked out.

Luna continued to run her fingers through Hermione's hair. Hermione sighed and bit her lip. She couldn't cry but she felt her throat burn.

"How can I face them?"

It was Luna's turn to sigh. It was like a breeze that blew through a valley, soft and from somewhere far away.

"They'll always love you, you know. If you feel any guilt no one else places it on you."

Hermione buried her face deeper into Buckbeak's feathers.

"We aren't going to win, are we?" She asked in a voice that held no question. Luna paused for a minute before answering.

"I don't think it will feel like a victory even if we do."

Hermione raised her head slightly to look at Luna, who went on.

"Do you think it will make any difference to you? Of course you can justify the need to win, but will you feel the joy and triumph of winning after losing so much? I just think that we have gotten to the point where it won't matter much to anyone who is fighting now. None of us will be able to truly live, we'll all just be surviving."

…

Hermione opened the door cautiously. The room inside was dim. Only cold light coming softly in from the window illuminated the figure on the bed. Tonks was the most still Hermione had ever seen her. She lay flat on her back, her head turned away towards the window and her hands folded on top of her stomach. Her hair was a dull mousy brown.

Hermione stepped into the room and quietly sat in the stiff wooden chair beside the bed. Tonks made no move to acknowledge her presence. Her eyes were half lidded and blank. She had only been in the room for a day but her skin looked ashen and with a pang Hermione noticed that her stomach looked flatter than it had before. It looked deflated.

"It was a boy."

Tonks' voice was strained and quiet, as though she had to drag it up from somewhere deep and damp and empty. It was nothing like her. Like her hair and her skin and her dead eyes, her voice held nothing of the wild, passionate, hilarity that was Tonks. Hermione wanted to scream and cry and kill everyone and bash her head into the wall. She knew that even if she did it wouldn't make Tonks blink. Win or lose now there was no meaning for Tonks in living.

"I'm so sorry." Hermione said. It wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be but she couldn't say anything else. "I am so sorry Tonks."

Tonks shook her head minutely.

"It never should have happened."

….

Hermione stayed in the room with Tonks for twenty more minutes but Tonk's was lost in a land of limbo in which she was neither dying nor living and Hermione could think of nothing to say that would ease either of their pain. Tonks had always filled whatever space she was in with her energy, temper, and laughter. Now she was profoundly empty. In fact, over the coming weeks the residents and visitors of Grimmauld Place would come to view the room Tonks remained in as a kind of black hole in which sound and light could not exist, not in this case because physics did not allow it, but rather because Tonks would not. Though no one saw her move and there was no indication that she was doing it on purpose everyone got the distinct, unnerving feeling that the magic surrounding Tonks was preventing anything positive from entering that space. Had they had the time or resources the Order members would certainly have attempted to rehabilitate Tonks more fully but because they couldn't think of any immediate solutions and the pressing issues of war and survival kept them busy they instead accepted the dark room with the closed door in the house that was only opened when one of them took food into her.