A/N: There it is! A pairing about which I have been secretly wishing to write for such a long time... This chapter is a prologue of sorts, and I do not plan on making this story long (it will be probably 3 chapters, but if - when I finish - you'd like me to continue, I might take that under consideration). It takes place right after the Battle of Hogwarts. Please, do enjoy your reading - and review if you'd like!

There were not many secrets they kept away from one another, sharing almost everything. However, there was one thing Hermione Granger had never told her friends... one thing neither Harry nor Ronald had never got to know – and one thing she would wish they would never come to realise.

After all, when she had returned to check on the Master of Potions after the great battle, she had not expected to see him alive. Barely, yes, but still breathing, his pulse weak as she touched his wrist.

It simply did not seem to be right as everyone mourned over Fred, Lupin or Tonks... and yet, hoping she would get there on time, Hermione snuck out of the castle, making her way towards the Shrieking Shack, right where they had left the professor before a couple of hours. The corridors were in so much chaos that no-one even noticed her; she did not even need Harry's cloak to be invisible.

As she ran, she kept one of her hands in her pocket, obviously hiding something. Her lips moved quickly in her Muggle habit of praying. Praying that it would not be too late... that she would be able to save this one life – just like she had with Harry, when they had both been fourteen, just this time without the Time-Turner.

She was said to be the most intelligent young witch – then she would make a proper use of her wits and just a little bit magic would be necessary.

Her breath was quite laboured as she burst into the room and knelt right next to the man's body, reaching for his hand. Closing her eyes, she kept whispering for a while – one could say she was casting a spell, but the truth was she was still praying – then stopped, her face even more focused than before a while.

And then, she felt it. A delicate pulse right under the paper thin layer of his skin. Without a second thought, she sent her Patronus to St Mungo's right before she began to try to stop the bleeding. With a deep sigh, she pulled her left hand out of the pocket; it was trembling lightly as her fingers straightened up, showing a little, wrinkled stone.

"Don't be dead yet," she murmured and peremptorily pushed the stone into the unconscious man's mouth.

For a moment, she was afraid she only made the situation worse as his body stiffened and his back arched. Holding her breath, she found herself holding his hand in both of hers, ignoring the fact all of his body was covered in blood.

"Do not die yet," she repeated, this time louder, and she would swear she could see his eyelids flutter open – just for a split second before her body protested against being used this much and the next thing she remembered was darkness.

At first, his body was so numb he could not feel it – as if his consciousness was floating somewhere out of it. After a while, though, he was mercilessly pushed back into his own flesh and pain hit him with so much strength that he groaned.

As he took a first deep breath after what seemed to be eternity, he realised he was in a bright, large room with no-one around him. The light around him was a pain to his eyes, so used to the darkness he had lived in for so long, so he closed them, trying to remember anything from before the awakening.

There was him... the Dark Lord... his snake... and then, a terrible pain as a high, cold voice told the snake to kill him...

If the Dark Lord had told the snake to kill him, then why was he still alive?

But then, just one more memory emerged from the nothingness; one he would have never expect to appear underneath his heavy eyelids: a worried, pale face of a young woman, her brown locks covering the majority of her looks in shadows... There were tears in her eyes... Why was she crying...? She was definitely someone he used to know. Lily...?

Another sigh left his chest, and he coughed. Had she not been there at that very moment, he was sure he would have died.

"No, not Lily," he wheezed to himself as a sudden realisation hit his mind like a hammer. "It was... Granger..."