Chapter 1

The hallway was unsurprisingly dark. After all, it was in the middle of a moonless night. Pressing against the cold wall, dipping into new corridors. After a year gone, it was surprisingly easy to get lost. The castle had morphed and adapted in a way to accommodate the evil. Or rather, attack the evil, much like the way a body would a virus. It was hard not to internally recite A History of Hogwarts passages as Hermione mulled this over. "...in prior case Hogwarts has proven to have a natural purging process in the case of evil: a concept encouraged by the magical works of wizards yet continued by the castle itself as a defense mechanism..."

She felt Ron press into her and push her closer to the stone wall. It was hard not to feel a brief flicker of annoyance. "Ronald.." Her voice was barely a whisper but in the ominous silence of the stone castle, came out as if audibly spoken. "Bloody hell Hermione, I'm cramped in this hallway myself", came back the much louder whisper.

She instinctively shushed him, and they passed below a dimly lit torch long enough for Hermione to recognize a familiar grimace. He was looking rough, his face being a mirror to the hardships of the year; hair sticking up and dirt so thick you forgot about the freckles. It seemed so circular and surreal that in their end he was ruddy and covered in dirt, just as he had in that first meeting on the Hogwarts Express. The thought made her heart fill, and there was an intense unexplainable desire to touch his face.

He was worn and tired, but had never been so beautiful. His quick ease to lay out a plan for them. Not only a typical thoughtless ruddy Ronald plan. Something that could work. They pushed into another corridor and they were nearly there.

Then all at once Hermione was gripped by the cruelty of it all. Their whole memories were passing by in a blur and with the deeper they went into the castle, the more these memories were becoming meaningless. It felt intensely raw to be aware of it, but this was the day she would die. Her life, that felt so real and necessary, was meaningless in the eyes of her cause.

She felt Ron push into her again and the tears finally began to flow. She would never have more with Ronald. These 7 years of shallow arguing and confusing mixed signals would be it. That would be their love story. Nothing more than a petty high school friendship. He would never know that she cried the whole way through Hogwarts that night. He would never know how she was gripped with the sheer injustice of a love with unfulfilled potential. Her heart pounded and ached and she gripped the castle wall, it would have been such a great love. But he would never know. They would die long before she had reason to tell him. It was the wrong time to tell him; they had a mission. It was then that they reached the bathroom.