The Hogwarts express had never looked so empty. Entire compartments stood bare, their doors lolling open with the motion of the train. Hermione Granger sat with her eyes in a book (Transforming the Impossible: Carrots to Chariots), her brown eyes moving quickly along the pages. Her head rested against the compartment window, and her foot tapped quickly, altogether separately from the calm chug of the locomotion.
To her right was a rather fat ginger cat, and beside the cat a rather thin ginger girl. Ginny Weasley held the latest edition of The Quibbler at arms length, tilting it to each side as her large green eyes followed the movement. A golden scale spread across both pages, protruding in the center. With each movement to and fro small cartoonish skulls with comically frightened expressions tipped to either side. Above the scales, a deep crimson font read 'Goblins Back in Gringotts, Are Corruption and Revenge Tipping the Scales of Justice?' Hermione had bitten back a derisive snort upon reading the title and the short text below it, saying only,
"The end of the terror filled reign of Voldemort returns Goblins to Gringotts. After mistreatment by wizard coworkers, are those hallowed vaults filled with more than Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts? New insider information enlightens us on the skeletons hiding in the Gringott's vaults. Cont. Pg. 14"
On the opposite seat, quite unaware of the internal struggle Hermione had withstood, sat Luna Lovegood. Her wiry platinum hair sat piled haphazardly on the top of her head, held in place by a wand, three brightly colored quills, and an assortment of metal clips. Luna too held the magazine in front of her, but seemed engrossed in the page fourteen continuation of the story. She was wearing what could be considered muggle clothing based only on the fact that they were so completely unwizardlike. A pleated tartan skirt, faded at the knees, stopped right above Luna's ankles, revealing two different socks; one pink with lace trim, the other old and off-white. The skirt was nearly hidden for the massive blue jumper that was folded dozens of times at the arms, and pinned around the collar with buttons and badges. In her spare hand rested a half eaten pumpkin pasty, leaning precariously close to the edge of the seats.
Hermione set her book in her lap carefully, raising her eyes from the cover slowly as if putting off the sight before her. Her eyes drifted over Luna, to the empty seats beside her, to Ginny stretched out beside Crookshanks with ample room.
Ginny, noticing Hermione's reprieve, set down her own reading.
"It's odd going back without them, isn't it?," she said, more a statement than a question. Her gaze was trained on the compartment doors.
Hermione stared as well, thinking. "Was it like this, last year? It's odd, really. It doesn't feel real. Like they're going to come through the doors and then school will be allowed to begin."
"It was, and it wasn't," started Ginny, turning to look at the older girl now. "It was odd in the same way, like an alternate universe, you know? But then, you hadn't had a choice then. It was heavy but also lighter…like it made sense, like you'd all gone off for a big purpose and once you'd sorted it out, you'd all come back and it'd be the same. It was really naive, I guess."
Hermione dropped her eyes, somehow ashamed. If she was being honest with herself, she truly thought Ron and Harry would return for their final year as well. She felt she needed to explain their choice, to make Ginny understand but she didn't really understand herself; they hadn't given her the option to. For all they had been through, neither boy, Harry nor Ron, had discussed the decision with her beyond the final conversation. She knew, somewhere inside of herself, that the boys had talked about it frequently among themselves their last summer at The Burrow, keeping their conversations to the bedroom they shared so that Hermione couldn't dissuade them, or worse, inform Molly of their plans. A small trickle of defiance and hurt ebbed inside her heart, tightening slightly. She would have dissuaded them…she should have! It was foolish, and rash, and rude, Hermione thought, to leave it all behind, herself and Ginny, and Luna, and everyone who had fought and was returning despite it to learn and see the castle halls repaired.
The boys had sat together after dinner, Molly having just announced when they would be going to Diagon Alley, casting sheepish looks at each other before announcing that they wouldn't be needing new books, or quills, and that Kingsley had offered them all jobs at the Ministry and they had decided to take them. Everyone had stared, dumbstruck, for a fraction of a second before Molly had erupted, crying and shouting at once that they were still children and after all the losses and the fighting couldn't they just go back for one year, finish their educations and be safe and be students, not adults, or aurors. The shouting had lasted for hours, and the crying for days. When at last it seemed clear that the boys would not sway in their decision, Molly had sent an owl to Percy asking him to let the boys stay with him in London and, Hermione suspected, keep an eye on them and send regular reports.
She clenched her jaw, turning her head slightly away from the other girls, remembering.
That evening, Ron had sidled into the garden where Hermione had been sullenly watching Crookshanks chase gnomes and sat next to her on the craggy stone bench. His arm reached hesitantly around her, where it felt all at once like home and like salt in a wound.
"Hermione, we wanted to tell you…I wanted to tell you, but we knew you'd never go along with it and we couldn't risk anyone knowing before we'd sorted the details, you know…"
"Well you couldn't have wanted it very much, could you, either of you, or you would have told me, you would have trusted me to keep it secret, if it meant so much to you! You should have trusted me to understand!," she had whispered fervently.
She looked at him, tears pooling in her eyes, all at once angry and ashamed that they had hidden this from her and the small voice in the back of her head saying 'Would you have kept it a secret, really?'
"Why couldn't you wait a year? Finish school, see everyone before we all move along…"
"Hermione," Ron started, looking pained, "it's not the same and you know it! We knew you wouldn't stay back for anything, but Harry and me, we've got jobs now! Catching the last of them, we could really make a difference. You know it's not over just because You-Know-Who has croaked, we've still got to fight and now we have the chance!"
"You've already made a difference!," she said, her voice rising now. "We all have! There are already aurors, Ron, Kingsley, and T-," her hand flew to her mouth, as if trying to hold the name in.
Ron grimaced. "Tonks? Tonks and how many, who died fighting! They left behind a baby, 'Mione. If there's anything we can do to make it right, to make them pay…you know we've got to do it! Harry and I understood that you'd never take Kingsley up, we always did! But this is our future, our choice to make and we've got to act!"
She had stared down at her hands for a long time, then, looking at her knuckles and her fingers and her nails. Finally, she spoke, in barely more than a whisper.
"'Our future', Ron? I always knew there was an 'our future' but I thought- you, Harry, and me, or-", her voice cracked. "You and me-" Ron's mouth opened to interject but Hermione spoke on, louder. "I understand. I hate it, but I understand and I don't hate you, either of you, but I hate you, both of you right now because you had all summer Ron! And you kept me in the dark, you let me have this awful wonderful summer and I realize now that it was a cushion for this, all of it, wasn't it? It was all a last hurrah before you both go off and leave me, and-" her voice cracked again, a sob wrenching through her now, "don't you see it all feels fake now?"
A look of mingled confusion and hurt crossed Ron's face as he spoke, "How can you say that? It wasn't some stupid send off, Harry and I didn't even know what we were going to do at first that's why it took all summer to sort, we didn't plan some elaborate lie, Hermione, c'mon," his expression softened, reaching out with his other hand to wipe a tear from her cheek. "And I always thought, you know, they are owls anyway, we can write loads, it won't be like we're just gone-"
At those words she stood up, shrugging his arm away. She stood for a moment, gritting her teeth and willing herself to breathe deeply, willing the sobs and the cries to snake down her throat and away from her mouth.
"Yes, Ron, you're right," she said finally, turning to walk back to The Burrow, "at least we'll have owls."
Ginny's eyes were bright when she looked at her again. She held her gaze, knowing the other girl had her own moments to remember. Her own hurt to stamp down or otherwise accept. A silent understanding passed between them, a look that burned deep and said 'I know your pain. I know your fear. We are in this together.'
The three girls stayed mostly silent throughout the remaining journey to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. They made occasional small talk as the train snaked through hillsides and valleys, wondering amongst themselves who else had returned this year, how different everything would feel, and how their classes would be. They ate when the trolley rattled down the hall, and eventually changed into black robes. The sun sat low and fat against the grasses stretching out around them. At last, as the final golden rays fought against the violet night, the peaks of Hogwarts pierced the air and the train's pace eased.
They grabbed a carriage together, and Hermione felt something like panic rise in her throat. She swallowed, begging her mind to focus on the swath of pine darting passed the open window, on the smell of rich dirt, or the feel of cool air on her cheeks. It was real, she was really going back alone. Hot tears bubbled along her lashes and spilled to her cheeks, immediately hot against her cold skin, then, with the breeze, colder than anything. She let them hang there, like ice on her jaw. She didn't want to wipe at her eyes until she could be sure the other two wouldn't notice. This was her year, Hermione thought to herself fiercly. She was brave, and smart, and this was her year to prove to herself she could brave the stone halls and classrooms on her own.
The earthen road curved around the expanse of black water, a shuttle of small boats drifting on the calm waters. She was reminded of her first year, alone and immensely afraid, telling herself the same thing. That she was brave, and smart, and the year was for herself, for a new start and a new way of life. She almost laughed from the bitterness of the memory. That had been a year for discovery, but not of independence as she had thought. It had been a year of friendship, of values. She closed her eyes against the tears and the wind and allowed Ron and Harry to swim beneath her eyelids. Eleven years old, and horribly awkward as they had been. Her best friends. They still were, she knew. They always would be. She willed herself to think of another year gone by, of joining them in their adult lives and being together again. It would happen, she knew. It had to. Yet in this moment, the carriage seat hard against her back and her tears burning on her face, the hurt and the sorrow and the complete loneliness engulfed her spirit and she could not call on any thought other than the image of the Gryffindor common room, so many laughs short of being loud.
Students hurried around her. Luna had drifted inside the castle with a silent wave. Hermione stared at the great double doors, taking what she hoped would be steadying breaths. In her minds eye she saw rubble, chunks of stone and bloodstained wood splintering the stairs. The image before her was too perfect. There were no scars. A large plaque stood white as moonstone against the castle wall to her right, shining back the names of all lost in the Battle of Hogwarts. It was hauntingly pale, a ghost of all the ghosts she had known and lost.
A warm arm rested around her shoulders, and Hermione rested her head momentarily on Ginny's shoulder.
"Let's go." She said. Her voice was steady.
Together, the two girls stepped forward.