Bodies.
She ran. The hallway echoed of screams and moans of agonizing pain. She heard her named being yelled out from a distant corridor. She kept running, she knew that voice all to well. She had to get to him in time. Sparks glistened the hallway as teachers and students took aim against their hooded foes. Ducking and crawling through the wreckage, blasting spells at those who got in her way she kept a steady pace towards her screamed name.
So many bodies.
A hand reached for her ankle, causing her to lose her balance and fall to stone floor. Shaking her head to recompose herself, she looked for the source of the hand and turned to face the blackened eyes of Hannah Abbott. Her face was covered in crimson blood. She kept trying to crawl towards her, her legs both missing from an explosion earlier in the battle. "...why?" Her once beautiful blue eyes were bloodshot and hardened. She watched the rest of her light fade away and she drifted into her next life. The Hufflepuff never deserved this. None of them did. She looked around at them all again, her arms and legs covered in the blood of her friends and foes. The scream. She was close. She had to keep going. Picking herself back up she managed to get through to the door that held the scream. The door was covered in bloody hand prints.
The source of the scream was just inside, she could make it. She flung the door open.
"HERMIONE!"
She awoke harshly, falling out of her seat. She inhaled drastically, like she had been drowning and just reached air.
"Sweetheart..." Ginny wrapped her arms around her best friend. Hermione was shaking uncontrollably. All eyes were on her in the Gryffindor common room. She had been helping Ginny with her studies and had fallen asleep curled up on the couch near the fire. Sleep came in short supply now-a-days. Her dreams never stopped reliving her past. Sometimes she would make it just in time, and others... It was too late.
Hermione smiled softly, and slowly got up. She reached for her bag, "I'm going back to my dorm, dear. Hopefully you'll be okay with tomorrows test with Muggle Studies?" Ginny smiled sadly at her best friend. Looking her up and down, she had realized how much her friend had taken the war so hard. She was incredibly skinny, even with Ginny force feeding her friend when she had a chance. Hermione's eyes looked dead inside, her once lovely hazel turned into a dark deep brown. Her once radiant skin looked pale and ghastly. Why she had decided to come back to Hogwarts to finish her last year, she would never know. She had plenty of offers around the wizarding world for positions, to which she humbly declined. "I'll be alright. How tough could a ...," She glanced at her notes "a cellphone be?"
Hermione smiled and exited the common room. As she walked the hallways of Hogwarts, bodies entered her mind. People screaming for help, him screaming HER name for help. She stopped, fighting back her tears. She punched the closest wall until her knuckles bloodied. She looked down at her arm, looking at the bone sticking out from the flesh. Her face remained calm, but tear-stained. She couldn't feel the pain of what she had just done to herself. She was numb. She was dead inside.
Dead like Hannah Abbott.
She walked quickly to the Head Girls/Boys dormitory, covering her hand within her cloak. Whispering the password "Unity" to the Lion and Snake she ran up the stairs to her room, slamming the door behind her.
The silvery blonde looked up from his book. He didn't flinch as she had slammed her door, making their entire suite shake.
"Damn woman." Draco hissed under his breath.
_
Well, I'm back. After a very long long long absence. Nearly a decade really. But here I am, ladies and gents. Be sweet and review, make me want to keep coming back. Surprises lie ahead. This is not an instant fluff piece. I'm a firm believer in Draco being a very evil soul. What has the war done to Hermione? Is she still the same the girl? Still full of light, or darker? Only time will tell.