The first time she said it was the first time that Harry told the story of Snape's pensieve, in the trembling aftermath of the battle, while the three of them were climbing the stairs to Dumbledore's office. And it didn't seem worth wondering then what exactly was horrible. Right then, almost everything was.
Sometime later, she said it again, her hand resting on the stone basin of the pensieve. And when Ron looked at her in confusion, she clarified: "Snape, and Lily and Harry, and everything."
Ron tiredly agreed. "Yeah. Imagine if it had been my mum... or if he'd been a little less of a git and turned out to be Harry's dad!"
But that wasn't what she had meant at all.
The three of them had staggered to Gryffindor Tower and been assigned beds - together, in a room produced specially for the purpose, since no professor was much concerned with propriety at the moment. And while it might have been tempting to seek some comfort now that, at last, they were no longer in fear of their lives, Hermione and Ron were far too tired to do anything more than nestle against each other and drift off to sleep.
It was the next morning, when she woke up beside him, sore and in mourning and alive and gazing into the still-dozey depths of his blue eyes, that the horribleness truly came home to roost.
Ron's beautiful, beloved eyes.
Lily's eyes.
Snape's last breath.
It just wasn't right. He'd spent his whole life in pain for the love he'd driven away. He'd made himself a figure of hatred and mistrust, scorned and tormented by those on every side. He'd never had so much as a friend, for all they could tell - except Dumbledore, and even Dumbledore didn't completely trust him. He'd lived in a hopeless misery that made her feel sick to think about, and all for one purpose - to protect Harry. The last remnant of his lost love.
And then he was told it was all for nothing, that Harry was destined to die. That Dumbledore had used them both.
And Snape had died believing that - died looking into Harry's eyes, Lily's eyes, that he had given his soul several times over to save, and believing that he had failed.
He would never know.
It was horrible.
Together they went to breakfast, and began to renew old acquaintances, and catch up on everything that had happened during the school year they missed. And every time Hermione heard "Headmaster Snape", she flinched.
There wasn't any way to reach him. He wouldn't be a ghost. Ghosts wanted to stay in the world, to go on beyond death - Snape would have had no reason to. But you couldn't bring back the dead...
... and then she remembered.
It took some searching to find. Harry's descriptions of what had happened had been vague, and the forest floor was covered with leaves and muck and debris, and she couldn't ask anyone else at all to help her look. She and Harry and Ron were the only living souls who knew where the Resurrection Stone had been lost, and neither of them would understand why she needed it now.
But Hermione was never one to admit defeat, and at last, she held the stone in her hand, and turned it over three times, and called back the soul of a man she had sometimes hated and sometimes feared and sometimes respected and never really known.
The shade of Severus Snape did not look pleased to see her. "... Miss Granger?" Incredulity warring with a sneer, "What do you want?"
"Professor Snape?" she stumbled awkwardly. "I wanted... to talk."
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AN - That's honestly all I'm planning on writing. I'd like to hope that this is enough of an intro to get someone else inspired, but who knows?