"History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand—and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust." - Washington Irving
It's the big triumphant moments that they're asked about later. People want to hear the Story, and they care little for days under the beech tree or nights in the attic bedroom. Books on the "Second Wizarding War," as someone has decided to call it, leap from the Department of Mysteries to the Astronomy Tower with astounding speed.
A hundred things that mattered to Hermione are omitted, deemed irrelevant to the tale of Voldemort's defeat. The cursed necklace is a footnote on page 546 of 20th Century Wizarding Wars, though the exact identity of the cursed is not deemed germane. A student, it says. Months in the hospital, a year in the D.A, and Katie doesn't even merit a gender.
Fifty-four people had died fighting Voldemort that night at Hogwarts. But when the fifty-four funerals had long since passed, people will begin to say that about fifty people died during the final battle. Four people, omitted for brevity's sake. And by then, no one would care that fourteen of the victims weren't even of age yet or that the youngest of them had been in first year.
She knows they don't mean to be cruel. It's simply the inevitable compression of everything Hermione has worked for into abstract. Hundreds of years from now, when she, Harry, and Ron are long gone, the war will be another name and date, something else for OWLs. It will fade, not into obscurity, but into academia. The battle of Hogwarts will not be a culmination of everything, the grand event to which Hermione's life had seemed to be leading for years. It won't be a day of life and death and bravery and cowardice and jubilation and tragedy.
It will be a date.
Someone will copy it onto a flashcard and someone else will get it wrong on an exam.
To Hermione, May 2nd isn't sweeping skies, brilliant flashes of light, and united battle cries. It's fiendfyre lapping at her ankles. It's using every ounce of strength she has to keep Ron from running after his brother's murderer. It's the shiver down her spine as Bellatrix's killing curse whizzes through her hair.
How can they understand what all of it was like? The way the spangled purple cloth shimmered in the summer sun on the morning of Dumbledore's funeral. The cool floor of the Department of Ministries against her knees as she hid under a desk. Her clammy grip on Ron's waist as they swooped through the air on the back of a dragon. The cacophony of jubilation and mourning and relief that exploded in the Great Hall in the moments after Voldemort's body slammed against the floor.
The history books won't remember any of those moments. Hermione's greatest worry is that someday she won't remember them either.
A/N: Reviews make me a better writer.