Hermione liked to look back on her life. She liked to remember school halls, and school grounds, and her parents roast dinners. She liked to imagine her children looking back on their life, and she liked to imagine their memories.
She liked to imagine her eldest, Rose, looking back on the Ravenclaw common room, and how her friend always pestered her about her godfather's autograph.
She liked to imagine her second, Scorpius (Slytherin, like his father) looking back on holidays at Malfoy Manor, and disliking his grandfather.
She liked to imagine her youngest, Alice, Looking back on her days in Gryffindor, and how the common room was always busy.
The truth was rather different. Rose liked Charms, because she got to sit next to Cavan Nott, and secretly stare at him when no-one was looking. She liked sitting by the lake with her friend, and reading old classics, like 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Treasure Island'.
Scorpius liked flying, and would zoom around the pitch for hours on end, scaring the life out of his team by doing nose-dives less than two metres from the ground. He liked the slytherin common room, and how the flames in the fire were green.
Alice liked drawing, and using magic on her drawings to make them come alive. She liked solitude, and the peace of early sunday mornings in the great hall.
But that's another story.
Hermione liked to remember her hogwarts days as stone corridors, and the library, and late-night trips to the kitchens for ice cream. If asked to recall her fight with voldemort, she would refuse to answer.
She liked to remember Ron, and how he laughed at the wrong things.
She liked to remember Harry, and how he always knew what to do.
She liked to remember Draco.
She liked to remember (with a smile) how his father fainted on sight of her.
She liked to remember his face when she handed him a newborn Rose. The first time he'd laughed with her, smiled with her, danced with her.
She liked to remember Draco, and sometimes she visited his grave. She felt bad for her children, Rose was a sixth year, Scorpius fourth, and Alice first. At least they didn't get bullied. Did they? She didn't know, most of the time they were at school she was too busy blitzed out of her mind and staring at one of the hundreds of photos of Draco on the walls in their bedroom. She liked to cry over the books and documents in his office. She liked to look at the letter on his desk, signed with his signature, spiky, yet elegant letters standing out in green ink. She liked to cry over the single photo in his office, Him holding Alice, three weeks old, sitting on the floor with Scorpius and Rose behind him. She liked to get blitzed in the mornings, and not worry about anything. She liked to visit his memorial in the hall of the Ministry, and when she was sober and the letters didn't swim in front of her, she'd read the memorial plaque.
In memorial of the 29th Mimister for Magic,
Draco Malfoy, Killed on December 25th by a stray curse.
She never pointed out the flaw in the plaque. She never said that he was killed by a member of his own team on a death-eater hunt (for that's what they were). She never said he'd stared into the face of death as a junior Auror went on a killing spree. She never thought of how it must have felt, to know how you were going to die. That might scare her, and blitzed&scared is never a good combination. She knows this, she's sensible.
She liked her holidays with the Malfoys. She liked Alice's surprise (after 11 years of it) at how big the Manor was, and how Scorpius would sit in Lucius' Office and be taught odds and ends about business and how things work. She liked seeing Rose's face light up at the library. She liked sleeping in Draco's old room, and smelling him on the clothes in the wardrobe. She liked spraying herself in his cologne, and spending days in bed, just because she could.
She liked remembering all that. So that's what she did, kneeling on the floor of her bedroom. Thats what she did, seconds before...
Avada Kadavra