Hermione Granger is the brightest witch of her age. People have been saying that ever since she first arrived at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. No one required her to come back and to finish her seventh year of schooling. No one was surprised when she did. Or when the boys didn't.
Hermione was given many special privileges for her final year. She was allowed to choose her own topics to research. She was exempt from curfew. As the only student in her year, technically, she was given her own dormitory. It was every Hogwarts' student's dream.
It should have been her dream as well. She turned her dormitory into a private study and had permission to fill it with as many library books as she wanted. Ginny offered her a bed in the seventh years' dorm, but Hermione refused. She said she liked her privacy. What she didn't say was that she was afraid her nightmares would keep the other girls awake. She said that she liked the bed she had right now. Ginny noticed that it didn't look like it got used very often. Hagrid, patrolling the grounds at night, would often see her window shining with light long past the other candles throughout the castle were extinguished.
Everything had changed completely since Hermione's first year at Hogwarts. And yet, in some ways, it felt as though she had come full circle. No matter how nice people acted, no matter how considerate her teachers were, no matter how hard Ginny tried to include her, Hermione was lonely. She missed the boys. And so she started writing them long, detailed letters.
It didn't take her long to realize that almost everything she had to say to them was accompanied by a thought or memory that made her loneliness even more acute. She wrote anyway, and did her best to block any painful thoughts.
She wrote about the Halloween Feast and tried not to think about a mountain troll in a girls' bathroom.
She wrote about Moaning Myrtle popping up during her bath and tried not to think about brewing polyjuice potion in secret.
She wrote about tea with Hagrid and tried not to think about sneaking down there under the cover of the invisibility cloak.
She wrote about the House Quidditch matches and tried not to think about cheering the boys on as they competed.
She wrote about the Room of Requirement surviving the Fiendfyre and tried not to think about DA meetings.
She wrote about all the books in the Restricted Section she now had access to and tried not to think about how much easier things would have been if she had this information a year ago.
She went up to the Owlery and tried not to think about Hedwig.
The boys never wrote back. She tried not to be angry at them for that, but it was hard. Some days she was furious. But she tried.
She tried not to blame them.
She tried not to think about a pile of letters on a pair of graves.