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The omnipresence of the void

"It's over."

They had been standing there for what felt like an eternity. Stiffly, Hermione unlocked her frozen limbs and looked at the two figures silhouetting against the blinding brightness of dawn. Exhausted, covered in blood and dirt, their clothes ripped in places and their hair tousled, Harry and Ron were gazing dazedly across the sloping grounds, past the half-collapsed bridge that led to the winding path to Hogsmeade. The grass looked silvery from the morning dew, but every few yards, the delicate, shimmery green was streaked with black as though a giant beast had been clawing at the earth. Some of the craters made in the battle by the flying curses were still smoking. Here and there, the shapeless heaps of dead bodies were strewn throughout the grounds, and she could see the survivors wending their way to carry the corpses away.

"It's over," repeated Ron, a little louder this time, but his voice broke on the last word.

Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw him slump onto a block of stone, and his shoulders started to shake as he buried his face in his hands. She couldn't tell whether he was crying or laughing hysterically; he just kept shivering soundlessly. She turned to Harry and met his gaze; he was sporting a bleeding nose, and his skin was covered with soot and dust and blackened blood, which made his green eyes stand out sharply. She smiled, or at least she thought she did. The muscles of her face were taut, and the result must have been horribly distorted, because Harry suddenly blinked and frowned, snapping out of his daze.

"Hermione…"

"Don't say it."

Her voice was perfectly flat. She turned her back to the cold sunlight. Harry blinked and opened his mouth again.

"Don't say it. As long as we don't say it, it's not real."

"Hermione," he breathed, moving to grasp her arm, but she backed away a step.

"I need time. Just a little time, during which I can actually believe that we won. Give me some time, will you, Harry?"

The words were spilling robotically out of her mouth. She didn't wait for him to answer and turned on her heels, heading for the gaping front doors of the castle, across the courtyard. She climbed the stone steps, leaping over the one that had been blasted by a spell. Once in the Entrance hall, she broke into a run so the slice of the Great Hall that could be seen through its open doorway would only be a fleeting image as she dashed past it and to Grand Staircase. He was there. And she wasn't ready to see him, not yet. She took the stairs two at a time, darting up without a glance back, and slowed down only when she was completely out of breath and clutching her aching lower ribs. And even then, she did not stop, dragging her sore, weary limbs higher and higher, until she reached the seventh floor of the castle.

The higher floors had been more or less spared by the battle, its epicenter having been the courtyard, but some of the high windows had been blown from the outside, and the light streaming through them cast jagged shadows on the opposite wall and sparkled on the tip of the glass splinters around the window frames. The portraits on the walls were empty; their occupants were gone to the lower floors to see what was happening. Hermione paced along the deserted corridors, broken glass and bits of stone crunching under the soles of her shoes. The crisp morning air was gushing inside through the broken windows, carrying with it the rich smell of damp earth mingled with the acrid stench of smoke that made her throat itch. The distant chirping of birds echoed off the walls and sounded oddly dissonant.

She turned several corners, pushed several doors, only vaguely aware of her surroundings and relying on her instinct to guide her, before finding herself at the foot of a small tower and climbing a last, spiraling staircase. She sat on the wooden floorboards, leaning her back against a stone column, and peered between the bars of the parapet that ran around the top of the Astronomy tower. An eerie silence had fallen onto the castle and its grounds. The dark mass of the Forbidden Forest that began on the other side of the lawns and stretched out of view was perfectly immobile; the naked branches, tinged with gray and green as they had started to bud, did not rustle. The lake had taken the color of quicksilver, and its surface was as smooth as a mirror in the still air. From her high spot, the people carrying the last bodies inside the Great Hall looked like ants crawling up and down a hill.

It was over.

Hermione opened her mouth and breathed in, trying to fill her lungs as much she could with the cool air, but they felt too small, her ribcage not enough to contain her heart pounding wildly inside her chest. She was still winded after her climbing all these stairs. The thrill and acuteness of the senses that came with the adrenaline of the battle had ebbed away, leaving her drained and disoriented. She ought to feel victorious, relieved, scared, angry… She only managed to feel empty and slightly nauseous. It was over. They had won. But they had lost too much to feel like winners. She had the impression of hanging in a void between two worlds; one had shattered and crumbled into ashes, the other did not quite exist yet.

So she just sat there, watching as the blazing white disc of the sun rose to its zenith in the hollowed sky, before slowly starting to roll down to the horizon. She focused on her breath, wheezing slightly in her sore throat, on the dull pain throbbing in the various places where her body was bruised or scratched, on the tingling in her legs, numbed from sitting motionlessly for so long, on her skin prickling from the cold. And if she focused hard enough, she could actually believe that this life she felt coursing through her body was the only thing that mattered, that she had finally made it, almost unscathed, almost whole.

"Hermione?"

The floorboards creaked on her left. She winced at the pain in her neck as she turned her head to look at Harry, who had appeared at the top of the stairs. He was folding the Marauders Map he had probably used to find her to slip it back inside his pocket. Hermione rose heavily to her feet, swayed a little as her legs felt like cotton, and grabbed the parapet to keep her balance. His face unreadable, Harry walked over and leaned over the parapet, resting his elbows on it as he gazed in the direction of the lake.

"His parents are there," he spoke softly, without looking at her. "They would like to do everything that needs to be done before the Aurors come for them. Do you want to see him before they take him away?"

Hermione blinked. Somewhere deep down in the emptiness, something was awakening. Something she wasn't sure she was ready to face.

"He isn't a good person, you know," she said, looking to the lake as well.

Its metallic gray surface was now like red-hot iron under the setting sun. She sensed Harry shift to look at her.

"He really isn't. He switched sides and everything, and maybe without him we wouldn't have made it. But you don't have to be a good person to do the right things. And he isn't good. In fact, he is terrible. He is selfish, and arrogant, and rude, and oblivious. He tries, you know… He really tries when he is with me… for me… And let me tell you that he is not good at trying either. But he is here… He is here when I need it the most. He is the reason I made it through... Most of the time, I just want to throttle him. And then, I realize that him being who he is makes me feel alive, like he is the only real thing in all this madness."

She paused and turned to Harry, who was still watching her silently. His unreadable mask was cracking; she could see the tense muscles at the corners of his mouth and the crease between his eyebrows.

"I've never looked at him and thought: 'I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him'. In fact, I wasn't even sure that this… us… would still make sense after the war is over. But it wasn't supposed to end like this either. Today was not supposed to be an end. This was the only bit of foolishness I allowed myself – to think that today was going to be a beginning."

Harry's hand found hers and squeezed, tight, until their knuckles turned white and the tip of her fingers went numb.

"You need to see him, Hermione," he said bracingly.

"I know… I know, Harry. Let's go."

He did not let go of her hand as they made all the way back to the Entrance hall, staircase after staircase, step after step. The muffled hubbub of conversations was coming through the wide doorway of the Great Hall. Most people were talking in carefully hushed voices, and from time to time, hiccupping sobs or quiet wailing were to be heard. Nothing in this place felt like victory, merely like relief at the fact of still being alive.

Hermione paused on the threshold, staring unseeingly at the vast hall bathed in the gold and crimson light of the dying sun. The familiar faces were blurred and foreign in her eyes, and only one stood out sharp and clear. The ashes peppering his head and the dirt smeared on his face failed to tarnish the white-blond of his hair and the paleness of his skin. And in this moment, amidst all the figures around him, he was the only one that looked real to her.

She felt like running away, she moved forward instead. The room and the people seemed to rise around her, before she realized that she was, in fact, sinking to her knees next to him.

"Hey," she whispered, reaching out to brush the pad of her thumb over his pointed chin, up the edge of his jaw, and along his sharp cheekbone. "Remember that thing you told me yesterday? Me too… Me too."

The stone floor was falling away beneath her kneecaps, but a pair of strong arms wrapped around her and turned her around, pulling her into warm darkness, holding her tight.

"Say it, Harry," she whispered pressingly in the crook of his neck. "You can say it now. Say it…"

His embrace strengthened even more, knocking all breath out of her body.

"Hermione… Draco is dead."