When she did look back on her life directly after the war she found she could remember very little of it. It was all a mad rush of trying to help those who were still alive, rebuilding the world that she had come to love, and trying to avoid reporters and people who just wanted for her to talk about it all.

She just didn't want to talk about it, so she never did. How did one put into words how they had lost everything in a single day? When she had woken up on the morning of the battle it was with the war looming over her, casting ugly shadows where there should be none; but that bearable. She had learned to live with the threat of death lurking in the background wherever she went and she managed to deal with it. Because she wasn't alone. Whenever she woke up in that godforsaken tent in the middle of nowhere she would know that the likelihood was that no new progress would be made that day and while it was frustrating she could deal with it. And the only reason she could deal with it was for the two people who were always by her side.

Harry and Ron.

Even in the moments when their bickering escalated into full blown arguments she could never stay angry with them; the effort was too much to compete with her love for them both. They had been together for what felt like a lifetime but in reality was only six years and over those years they had become her family more than anyone else. She loved her parents but in the wartime they had moved to the back of her mind, she reasoned with herself it was because she had sent them away and that they were safe, but in reality she knew why it was; while she loved them sometimes her friends felt more like her family than her kin. It was because of this that when Harry and Ron both became lost to the greater good she felt like she would never be completely at home again.

She was right.

Years later when everything had gained some semblance of normality she had tried to reach out. To reconnect with the people around her. The first were her parents. At first they had been angry for her deception and her measures in keeping them safe, but the anger was only a guise to hide the fear. She tried living with them again but within the month she was back on her own. She had so wanted to stay but she could see that she was bad for her parents now. They couldn't understand what she had been through,

(when her mother had seen how thin and haggard she had become Hermione pretended she couldn't see the tears in her eyes. Her father's eyes filled with an unbearable sadness each time he moved to touch her and she flinched violently away from him with fear always predominant on her face. The day she left was the day that her mother had seen the scars from the battle and the torture. She had begged her to stop talking when she told her how they had come to be while her father silently encouraged her to speak. The memories of her torture in Malfoy Manner were painful but nothing compared to how she felt now. The hardest part was when she remembered who had saved her)

and she couldn't remember what it was like to feel whole. She left and they cried but Hermione knew that this was a mercy on her part.

The next person she tried to love again was Ginny. She could relate to her partly since Harry and Ron had meant almost as much to her as they did to Hermione. Except it was different now. She was welcomed to the Burrow as though she were family and maybe she used to be. But not anymore.

Ginny and George had suffered the most out of the war though the family was by no means whole. She found herself unable to stay long and was saying her goodbyes before three months had yet to pass. When she left George was the only one to look at her with understanding. He knew what it was like to know that you were never going to be whole again.

(she gradually lost contact with the Weasley family as time progressed save for the annual Christmas letters and even they became terse and generic. She tried to stay in touch with Ginny but she had moved on. Ginny never said but her patience grew thin for her once-friend who had never stopped morning. She got married and had children, she told Hermione that it was what Harry would have wanted and Hermione knew that she was right. She never blamed Ginny for moving on, but she could never quite look in the eye when she did)

It was then that she realised that this was the way life was going to be. She had realised that on her own no one wanted her. She had been too damaged to ever function properly again so she focussed on just managing to get by.

She threw herself into her work and flew through the ranks. She ignored the whispers about her, what harm could malicious words do to her now? There was no reason to let them upset her, after all there would be no one there to comfort her. But none the less people whispered; she never did figure out what they said but it bothered her little. She knew they only talked because they were intimidated her. Her focus unnerved most of them and truth be told it unnerved her sometimes. She immersed herself in each project and learned every aspect of it that there was to know, it was second nature to her now. She did this until she ran herself into the ground, there used to be people dragging her away from the books and the knowledge, making her laugh and smile and relax. Not anymore. People passed her by, never stopping her and never really noticing that she was there, until one day she wasn't.

(It was an ordinary day forty years after the war when she walked into her flat once more. She didn't have time to fully close the door behind her when she felt the tightness in her chest and the pain shooting through her left arm. She toppled to the ground and moved no more. She was found the next day by the postman as he walked past and saw the door still open, he looked in and panicked at what he saw. When the story was picked up by the Daily Prophet they painted her as an old hero who worked tirelessly all her life. They never said how alone she was or how not a single person volunteered to write the obituary. Her friends didn't know her any longer and it would be an insult to her memory to pretend that they did.

They never mentioned how she died with a smile on her face)

….

A/N- Thank you for reading and I hoped you enjoyed it, if you did please review. Harry and Ron will be the next chapters so I hope you stay tuned!

All the best,

VE