Disclaimer: All rights belong to J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. I own nothing but the plot.

Warning: If you are looking for a fluffy, light-hearted fic, this story probably isn't the right one.

Rated M for death, violence, mental disorders (child and adult), psychological trauma, adult themes, eventually future sexual scenes.

Rather dark Dramione with a slow burn. Characters can be OOC because of the plot.

Reviews are very welcome! I'm very interested in your opinion and it is my greatest encouragement. Enjoy your read!

" She liked broken things,

Broken people.

To her,

If there was nothing to fix,

There was nothing to love."

- Christopher Poindexter

Requiem and Rhapsody

Chapter 1:

Prelude

The hands of the young woman were flying over the black and white keyboard, jumping from an octave to the other. Her fingertips were stroking the white keys, fluttering up to caress the black ones briefly, in a conversation where music was responding to touches. Her eyes slid over the lines on the yellowed music sheets in front of her, more out of habit than necessity, gazing unseeingly at the black and white heads, hanging from their tiny, elegant stems, or, on the contrary, pulling them up, the swirly little flags stirring in a nonexistent breeze.

Music is easy for those who understand its language. It knows when to shout, it knows when to cry, when to murmur, and sometimes, it even knows when to fall silent and for the exact time it has to. Music is dots and lines, black and white. Whereas life is all winding roads, cliffs to jump off, dead ends to bump into, all plunged in half light, hidden in shadows, and where even black and white have their shades of gray.

The girl's gaze traveled to the bookshelf standing against the wall behind the piano. The books were neatly lined up in tight rows, some of their titles, written in gilded letters on their leather bindings or simple paperbacks, were glinting in the soft glow of a single lamp overhead. On the top shelf, a collection of picture frames was artfully displayed so the ones on the front did not hide the ones behind; they were disparate, some of them simple and wooden, others, which could have easily belonged in a teenage girl's room, were brightly colored and decorated with seashells or artificial flowers.

Some photographs were moving – waving, winking and smiling from behind their spotless glass windows; a family, which's members all extraordinarily had flaming red hair, a man, whose reddish, beaming face was framed by a shaggy mane of hair and a bushy beard, a happy couple – the purple-haired young woman clinging onto the arm of a graying man, who looked weary but was smiling and had youth in his eyes. The pictures that weren't moving all showed mostly the same couple: proud parents, holding the hands of a little bushy-haired girl with buck teeth – at a fair, in a library (the girl was barely visible behind the stacks of books in that one), or showing off a primary school diploma.

All the photographs, muggle and wizarding, didn't have a speck of dust on their frames. All but one that stood in the very middle, like frozen in time. The glass was dull from a thin layer of dust, beneath which three kids were holding hands and grinning at the invisible camera. The bushy-haired little girl – who was probably eleven or twelve years old at the time the picture was taken – stood between a small boy with messy black hair and bright green eyes that glinted behind his round glasses and a tall redhead with freckles, who had the thin frame of someone who had grown too fast. All three of them were smiling widely at the young woman sitting at the piano, their black Hogwarts robes tossed by the wind around their ankles, oblivious of the years that had passed and of what had become of themselves.

"This one is for you," whispered Hermione to one of the kids in the picture, even though it was long she had stopped playing.

She stood up and cast a glance around the dimly lit living room. It was short after dawn, and a cold, bleak morning light was filtering through the gap between the heavy curtains shielding the windows. Crossing the room, she stepped over a pile of rather skillful child's drawings lying on the floor in a stripe of bluish light and went quietly to the bathroom door. She examined her reflection in the mirror above the sink, warily at first, and then with a methodic, unforgiving eye: she pressed her fingertips to the outer corners of her eyes, pulling at the skin. She hadn't regained yet all the weight she had lost during the year she had spent wandering in the wilderness, hunting the Horcruxes. Her features looked sharper with her skin drawn over her cheekbones, and the shadows under her eyes and in the hollow of her cheeks were all the more noticeable because of the general paleness of her face.

Hermione sighed and rummaged inside a small cosmetic bag that was on the rim of the sink next to a toy plastic boat, retrieving a large make-up brush and a flat, square box containing barely used light pink powder. She applied some color to her cheeks, covered her lips with a colorless balm and pulled her wild, dark curls into a tight ponytail at the nape of her neck. She then needlessly smoothened the fabric of the black pencil skirt and the navy blue shirt she was wearing, and after one last critical glance in the mirror, walked out of the bathroom.

She crossed the living room again, snatching her purse from a chair and taking a hot thermos from the counter of the open kitchen as she walked by. She put the thermos inside her bag, dropping it on the floor of the narrow hallway that was the apartment's entrance, and slipped her feet into a pair of leather boots standing by the door. Taking a thick blue winter coat from a wall-mounted hanger, Hermione threw it around her shoulders with a long black scarf she wrapped loosely around her neck, before returning to the kitchen area.

She had almost forgotten that Nathaniel would probably wake up before her return. Taking a bottle of milk out of the fridge, she poured some into a glass for it to warm up at the ambient temperature and put it with a bowl and a spoon on the dining table standing between the kitchen counter and the stove. She then fetched a square plastic box with a piece of fruit cake inside and a jar of cereals out of a cupboard and put them next to the glass of milk. Once Nathaniel's breakfast ready, Hermione rounded the counter and tiptoed to a closed door opposite the kitchen area and next to the entrance hallway. Quietly opening it, she popped her head inside.

The soft, golden glow of a nightlight standing on the bedside table revealed what was initially intended to be something of a guest room but had been rearranged to accommodate a child. Plush toys were piled on an armchair standing in the far corner, and every inch of the wardrobe was covered with child's drawings that had been stuck to it with Spello-tape. Asleep in the middle of the large double bed, the six-year-old boy himself looked like merely a small lump under the thick red comforter with yellow and purple dragons printed on it. Quietly entering the room, Hermione went to sit on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake the little boy as the mattress sank under her weight.

She watched him sleep, a small smile playing on her lips. Nathaniel's chest was rising and falling steadily beneath the red flannel of his pajamas, and his little fists were clutching the fabric of the comforter. Hermione reached out, brushing some feathery strands of straight, dark brown hair from his temple. The child's eyelids moved without opening, his long, black eyelashes casting tiny shadows on his smooth, round cheeks. A small crease appeared on his pointed chin and dimples formed at the corners of his mouth as he pouted at something he was dreaming about. Leaning over him, Hermione briefly pressed her lips to his forehead, and after readjusting the comforter over him, left the room.

It scared her sometimes to realize how much the child had grown on her. Kissing him goodbye had soothed her more than music or an hour preparing herself. She forgot more and more often that she had no right to get too attached to him. Dismissing the thought, Hermione picked up her bag from the floor of the entrance and pulled out her wand. Turning on the spot, she let the familiar sensation of being sucked through a black hole shatter and dissolve her body.

/\\/\\/\\/\\

The sound of her apparating was drowned out by the ambient hubbub of conversations and the loud pounding of footsteps on the polished, dark wood floorboards. Dozens of feet were stepping over the golden lines running on the floor and delimiting the Apparition area, as wizards and witches carrying stacks of papers, boxes, and briefcases rushed into the Atrium of the Ministry. Others joined them, dusting their robes and walking out of the row of gilded fireplaces set into the paneled wall on the left side of the vast hall, emerald green flames bursting high to the peacock blue ceiling and making its moving golden symbols shine.

Hermione mingled with the crowd, her field of vision becoming a forest of various hats and shoulders wrapped in thick scarves and clad in a disparate array of winter cloaks and Muggle coats. As it moved further toward the heart of the Atrium, the human tide suddenly split like a wave crashing on a breakwater, and as people continued on their way on either side, Hermione stopped, gazing at the edge of the wall towering over them and that had been erected in the middle of the Atrium, cutting it in two.

It ran all the way from the middle of the hall to the Fountain of Magical Brethren on its other end, a few feet taller than the people walking around it. Hundreds of names and dates, Muggles and wizards alike, were engraved in golden characters on its black marble surface on both sides of it, reminding them of the heavy cost of the war, fueling their confidence that weakness and leniency weren't an option now that it was over. As if they could ever forget. Voices were becoming hushed and footsteps slowed down as people walked on either side of the memorial, eying it out of the corner of their eye or stopping and bowing their heads, as though a weight had been dropped onto their shoulders. Flowers and rosettes were floating in midair in some places. Notes and pictures had been stuck to the marble next to many names, their now dead subjects smiling and waving sadly at the passers-by. There were even ordinary ones that weren't moving, placed there for Muggle friends and relatives.

Forcing herself to tear her feet off the ground, Hermione slowly moved to the side, gazing unseeingly at the familiar names and faces that turned into a blur inside her suddenly frozen mind. By the time she reached the fountain, she had to wipe her hands that were beading with cold sweat inside her pockets. Swallowing hard, she accelerated her pace, nearly running across the remaining distance to the golden gates of the lifts at the end of the Atrium. Once her wand registered at the security stand, she stood in line, waiting for a free cabin, as witches and wizards poured in and out of the elevators, her fists clenched, nails digging into her palms, and her face set resolutely.

Finally, an empty lift slid smoothly out of the depths of the Ministry and opened its gates to the line Hermione was standing in. She moved against the far wall of the cabin, as half a dozen people walked in by her side, a few purple interdepartmental memos rustling softly overhead. People exited and entered the cabin as it made its way deeper and deeper into the underground levels of the Ministry, until Hermione and an austere-looking, middle-aged witch in black robes, with a tight bun of graying hair at the back of her head, were the only ones left inside.

"Level ten. Wizengamot Courtrooms one to twelve. Execution rooms one to five.", announced a cool, disembodied voice as the gates of the elevator slid apart, opening on a narrow hallway with black-tiled walls and floor, stretching out of sight and lit by torches that glowed with an eerie bluish light.

The severe-looking witch strode out of the cabin, the sound of her footsteps against the stone floor echoing loudly off the walls. Hermione, however, remained rooted to the spot, cold nausea kicking in her stomach as she watched the woman walk away. She finally resolved to move, passing closed doors that didn't let through even the faintest of sounds. This level of the Ministry was a veritable maze, and when she finally stopped before a door indicating Courtroom number 10, the footsteps of the other witch had long faded in the distance. Hermione pushed the doorknob and entered.

The benches rising in levels around the room suddenly made her feel very small. The young woman shuddered involuntarily; the stone walls of the dungeon were seeping with a coldness that pierced to the very mind and soul, and the high, vaulted ceiling that was barely visible in the shadows overhead weighed down on her. Instead of taking off her coat and scarf, Hermione hugged them tighter to her, almost as to shield herself from her surroundings while she looked around. Even though she was early, everybody else was apparently already there.

On the benches opposite her and the door, on the other side of a wide circular space, in the middle of which stood a single empty chair, were sitting a good fifty people in plum-colored robes and with a silver W embroidered on their chests. Here they were, all of them; the men and women, who had promised to lead the Wizarding world out of the abyss it had plunged into after the war, to build a safer, stronger community. At the time, after Fudge's disastrous mistakes, Scrimgeour's blind, reckless and short-lived rule, Voldemort's dreadful reign from the shadows, having a large Committee of fifty members to rule the Wizarding Britain rather than taking risks with one-way policies of a single leader had seemed a good idea to the paranoia-stricken Wizarding community. They were promising change, they were promising to strike hard, and within months, decrees after decrees had been passed, the List had been released, the courtrooms were constantly busy, and a new web of death rows had expanded the deepest level of the Ministry with something worse than death waiting at the end.

They were now whispering gravely, shuffling stacks of papers, and only the Chief Warlock – a tall, slim, middle-aged man with spectacles, a long mane of salt and pepper hair and gnarled hands, who was sitting at the very front – was silent. The eyes of a bald, dark-skinned man, sitting on his left, fell upon Hermione as she paused in the doorway, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod. She answered Kingsley with a smile that looked more like a rictus and ran her gaze over the rest of the assembly. On the benches on her left sat a hundred people, civilians and Ministry officials mingled. She recognized some of them; former schoolmates and their families, colleagues and officials she had met in the corridors of the Ministry, familiar faces from the pages of wizarding newspapers. The tension was almost crackling in the air around them as they talked to each other in low, impatient voices. Some of them paused when they noticed Hermione; those who knew her personally gave her sympathetic looks, but most just stared at her with curiosity.

Her shoulders hunching under their gazes, she moved to the benches on her right; there were a lot fewer people there, twenty at most, and they were sitting stiffly, their faces – frozen masks. Hermione made her way to a cluster of red-haired heads, squeezing Mrs. Weasley's hands as she went by, and took place on the empty seat between Ginny and Percy. The young man was squirming on his spot, wiping needlessly his horn-rimmed glasses over and over again. Ginny, on the other hand, was very still and gazing straight ahead, tight-lipped and chalk-white beneath her freckles. Hermione took one of her cold hands from her lap and held it firmly.

"He is late," muttered Ginny through gritted teeth.

Hermione cast a glance at the empty space on the bench, on the other side of the red-haired girl, and her heart clenched.

"He is going to come," she assured in a low voice. "It's his best friend."

Ginny did not answer. A few more people arrived and took their places, the conversations started to die out, and Chief Warlock Fawley shifted in his high-backed chair. But the seat next to Ginny remained empty, and the girl withdrew her hand from Hermione's and pressed it between her thighs to hide the trembling.

"The trial is ready to begin," announced Fawley's loud voice, dry like sandpaper, each word snapping like a whip.

Silence fell upon the courtroom at once, heavy as lead. All the faces turned to the door of the dungeon, through which Hermione had walked in half an hour earlier, and after a short moment, it slowly swung on its hinges. The temperature in the room suddenly seemed to drop several degrees, and Hermione felt her insides churn with a renewed sickness. A tall man in chains, wearing ragged Azkaban robes, was brought inside, his broad yet bony shoulders held by the putrid hands of two hooded creatures gliding inches above the ground on each side of him, the despair and otherworldly coldness that radiated off them contaminating the entire courtroom.

Hermione closed her eyes, avoiding even to breathe as she waited for the Dementors to bring the prisoner to the chair in the middle of the room and leave. She opened her eyes only when she heard the clanking of chains winding around the man and the door of the dungeon bang shut. Ginny had slipped her hand back into hers. The silence was broken as warmth returned in the air. Whispers ran around the room like hisses of angry snakes as everybody watched the prisoner, sorrow, disgust, and hatred etched on every face.

For a long moment, he remained slumped on the chair, his head hanging low and only offering the sight of his greasy, dirty blond hair. Then, he slowly raised his head, revealing a sallow, starved face with hollow cheeks and a sharply outlined square jaw. Even his baby blue eyes looked dull and lifeless. Fawley considered him with an austere expression from his seat, a few feet above the ground.

Feeling as though her heart could leap out of her chest, Hermione cast a glance at the rest of the Weasleys: Arthur had wrapped an arm around his wife, Ginny was still staring straight ahead, Percy had stopped cleaning his glasses. On the bench behind them, Bill, Fleur, Charlie, and George sat like frozen. They all looked as though they were about to crumble but their faces were hard as stone. A few benches up on their left, Hermione spotted Dean Thomas; the dark-skinned young man was sitting alone and looked livid. Hermione slowly turned back to the Wizengamot.

"Thorfinn Rowle," spoke Fawley in a curt, cutting voice, "you have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law so we may pass judgment on you for your crimes. We have heard evidence against you. You stand accused of your affiliation to Tom Marvolo Riddle, the man who called himself Lord Voldemort, and your involvement in Death Eater activities. You are further accused of the use of all three Unforgivable Curses, the Killing Curse having caused the deaths of all five members of a Muggle family – Rosa, Ally, Jonathan and their parents Marc and Dora Bennett, of the Muggle spouses Jim and Lucy Cooper, of the wizard Florean Fortescue, of the wizard and Death Eater Garrick Gibbon, of the Muggle David Hughes, of the Muggle spouses Leila and Rick Thomas, of the wizard Ronald Weasley."

Fawley did not raise his voice, but the name boomed in Hermione's head like a gunshot and petrified her brain. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered whether his mother and stepfather's names had sounded so loud to Dean. Her knuckles were white as she squeezed Ginny's hand, and the strength of the girl's grip matched hers. Then, in the deafening noise of her own blood pumping in her ears and the cold numbness washing over her body, she was like pulled out of water and was breathing again. The Chief Warlock was still speaking.

"I now ask the jury to raise their hands if they believe, as I do, that these crimes deserve the ultimate penalty."

Hermione looked to her left and exchanged a glance with Percy. They knew only too well the nature of the trials that had been taking place ever since the end of the war, having witnessed most of them, be it on the benches of the public or their work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement bringing them on the ones of the Law Council itself as clerks or assistants. It was all a farce, a masquerade. The issue was long written. The Ministry showed no mercy to anybody with the shadow of the Dark Mark on their arm, eradicating them like a disease.

It struck Hermione how little affected the chained man was by the prospect of his upcoming sentence. How unconcerned most of them had seemed to be – the former Death Eaters – especially the ones of Voldemort's inner circle. She would have called it defiance. But it wasn't that. Defiance was a state of mind, something akin to emotion. And she couldn't read anything on their faces or in their posture, as though all human fears, anger and even the mere instinct of survival were foreign to them. They were like away, detached from everything. Could the downfall of their master have destroyed all their faith in their own existence?

A forest of hands was rising to the stone ceiling. People around the room were moving like a stormy sea. Hermione watched, like mesmerized, the prisoner. He didn't even flinch when Fawley delivered the sentence.

"The sentence is to be carried out immediately," sounded his loud, dry voice over the murmurs of the crowd. "All those with an authorization to access the execution room are to be there within half an hour."

There was something so expeditious, so careless of the human life, so very wrong in the way all this was done. But for once, Hermione didn't care, and it only fueled the dull dread she felt deep within herself. Everything was so very wrong. Her arm tucked under Ginny's, she waited for the courtroom to empty, and she and the Weasleys were the last of the audience to exit, the Wizengamot members leaving by a back door behind their benches, and Rowle remaining chained to his chair to be taken to the execution room by the Dementors.

As they walked down the cold, dim corridors, pushing further into the meanders of the deepest level of the Ministry, Hermione couldn't prevent her thoughts from wandering to the condemned man, led to his fate by the Dementors along a hidden, parallel passageway. She imagined him counting his steps, his last conscious heartbeats, and soon, her own strides were becoming laborious, reluctant, unwittingly slowing down. But Ginny's pace wasn't wavering, and she was dragging her forward, oblivious to Hermione's clammy hands and ashen face as nausea twisted and knotted her stomach with renewed force.

The massive black door of the execution room was looming at the end of another hallway, and the young woman watched it inch closer with eyes filled with dread until it opened and swallowed them one by one, before locking behind them. Snapping out of her daze, Mrs. Weasley turned to Ginny and opened her mouth, but her daughter cut her off before she could say a word.

"I stay," she hammered coldly, and Molly turned away, sadness marring briefly her features before her face shut again.

Five rows of hard, high-backed seats were rising in levels inside the dark, square room, facing a translucent glass wall that was shimmering faintly from the Protective Charms cast on it. The light of a fox Patronus pacing along it and conjured by an Auror, who was standing in the far corner, bathed the seats in an eerie glow and cast spidery shadows on the walls. As they all settled in the front row, Hermione caught a glimpse of the only other person to have demanded to watch the execution; of Dean, who was sitting in the middle of the back row, she could only see a black silhouette with his eyes glinting slightly as he stared at the glass wall. Hermione looked as well, fearing what she would see on the other side of the enchanted glass.

It was the first execution she was attending, not having done it even for Remus and Tonks, not even for Fred. But for Ron, she would do it. She would watch every bit of it, even if it had to scar her brain forever. The room on the other side was smaller and had only one iron chair in its very middle, with chains hanging from its back and its armrests, exactly like in the courtroom. It was facing away so the people watching from the dark room saw the profile of the prisoner. An iron, floor to ceiling door opened in the far wall. Hermione stared with an almost painful intensity, waiting for it to swing on its hinges to let in the prisoner and its terrible executioner.

So when the door on the left side of their room opened suddenly, she started. Chief Warlock Fawley, Shacklebolt and a dozen of Wizengamot members made their way inside the room and took their seats in the second and third rows of chairs. Kingsley leaned forward briefly to squeeze Arthur's shoulder and pat Molly's back. His lips curled into a sad smile when he met Hermione's gaze but she quickly turned away. The policies he had been supporting due to his position within the Wizengamot and hence the new Ruling Committee since the end of the War, a little less than nine months earlier, led her to question more and more often this man, who had once been one of Dumbledore's most trusted allies.

A metallic noise brought her back to reality abruptly. Hermione drew a sharp breath, and then, she wasn't feeling any life in her body at all: her senses sharpened at once, but the beating of her heart, the air in her lungs, the hairs rising on her forearms beneath the fabric of her shirt – every sensation vanished. Thorfinn Rowle was brought inside the room beyond the glass by two burly Aurors in black robes and heavy leather boots. They pushed him onto the iron chair, and as the chains snaked around his arms and torso, binding him to it, his face was as blank as it had been in the courtroom. Once they made sure that he was tightly secured to the chair, the Aurors left the room.

Suddenly feeling the first shivers of a panic attack run up and down her spine, Hermione averted her gaze, her eyes landing everywhere except on the condemned man in front of her. She couldn't bring herself to feel any pity for him, but rather a nameless aversion as to what was about to happen. Mrs. Weasley, on the contrary, watched him unblinkingly, almost straining against her husband's arms as she leaned toward the glass. There was something incredibly fierce and raw in the usually gentle gaze of the short, plump woman, contrasting with her generally harmless appearance, with her purple, knitted beret and her tartan cloak on top of her brown cardigan. And Hermione was suddenly convinced that should the Dementor fail to its task for some reason, Mrs. Weasley would have no qualms whatsoever about ripping apart with her bare hands the man who had murdered her son.

But the creature was already gliding inside the room, the enchanted glass panel and the silvery fox shielding them all from the icy despair it was exhaling. Hermione forced her gaze to remain on the other room but it refused to focus on the scene. Her vision was blurred, obscured by the images flashing behind her eyelids when she blinked, swimming to the surface from the darkest corners of her memory; Sirius and Harry writhing on the opposite shore of the Black Lake as Dementors came swarming hungrily over them… Black shadows zooming in the air as they feasted on every living soul within their reach, while the battle raged all around in the ruins of Hogwarts… It all swirled before her eyes, while the scene on the other side of the glass looked strangely slow.

In the flickering light of the other room and the feeble glow of the enchanted window and the Patronus, she could see the Dementor circle slowly around Rowle, like a giant, monstrous vulture, while it darted its hooded, skeletal head in every direction. Her eyes half closed, Hermione had, however, the vivid picture of the gaping hole it had for a mouth imprinted on her retina. Time was like frozen while she prayed for it to be over, trying with all her strength to swallow down the bile rising from her stomach. A choked whimper on her left told her that Ginny's composure was cracking as well.

Red hair and freckles. Ron.

Locking her jaws together, Hermione opened her eyes wide. For a fleeting second, she had the crazy impression that the blind creature was unable to find its victim. But then, the scabbed, glistening hands reached out and cupped Rowle's face almost lovingly. The man's head fell back limply, like one of a complying puppet, offering his staid face to the avid mouth of the Dementor, which started sucking in the air with a rattling sound they couldn't hear. A thin, tenuous, silvery wisp was escaping Rowle's convulsing body through his parted lips.

Confusion flitted through Hermione's mind. She had seen souls being sucked out, and this one had something odd about it. But maybe in the darkness of the night, in the chaos of the battle, which exacerbated her senses and overwhelmed her, she had only imagined them to be brighter, the strange, fluid wisps – thicker. The Dementor, however, seemed to find it not enough as well. Hermione could almost hear it hiss furiously as it flew around Rowle's slumped body – now merely an empty shell. Aurors were rushing inside the room, their wands raised as their Patronuses – a wolf and a falcon – chased the creature out. Hermione stared dumbly at the poor shadow of a human being chained to the chair, and suddenly, something inside of her snapped.

It was over. Ron was gone, and even during his burial, three days after the final battle, the finality of his death hadn't hit her as hard as it did now, with his murderer meeting his fate. The door of the room banged loudly, and Dean yelling echoed somewhere outside. Hermione gasped for air, suffocating. She stood up, looking around wildly, searching for something, anything. Molly was sobbing uncontrollably, collapsed against her husband. Hermione turned to Ginny and recoiled immediately under her desperate, crazed gaze. White as a ghost, the girl was shaking all over, her hands balled into fists. Tears were pouring out of her eyes and streaking down her taut cheeks.

"He didn't come!" she spat and stormed out of the room, her footsteps pounding angrily away.

And suddenly, Hermione couldn't bear to stay there anymore. Charlie and George were still frozen on their seats. Percy looked like a frightened boy in the shape of a grown man. Bill and Fleur were embracing the weeping, crumbling Mrs. Weasley; Arthur had released her to sit, his face buried in his hands. They had won the war and everything in this room screamed of defeat. Stumbling, Hermione exited the room, and once in the hallway, broke into a run.

She barely made it to the restroom next to the elevators at the entrance of the level, and there, sickness bent her in half. She retched all the contents of her stomach, which were mostly bile as she didn't eat anything in the morning. She kept dry-heaving because of the bitter, acid taste that burnt her throat and tongue, before finally resting her damp forehead against the cool tiles of the wall. When her nausea receded to a bearable level, Hermione crawled out of the cabin and washed her face at the sink with cold water, thoroughly rinsing her mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror, her hands clutching the rim of the sink.

It was over. It was over, and she had to go. Like in a daze, she left the restroom and took a lift to the ground floor, barely paying attention when it stopped to take in other passengers. The hustle and bustle in the Atrium had calmed down a little now that the workday had begun and most of the employees had returned to their posts. Hermione walked to a large marble counter not far from the lifts and handed a few Knuts to the smiling young witch in burgundy robes, who was standing behind.

"I need to send an owl," she muttered, rummaging inside her handbag.

The witch nodded, waiting for her to give her the letter. Hermione retrieved a notebook and a muggle pen and tore out a page to scribble three words: "Dementor's Kiss. – Hermione." She hesitated to write something else, but Ginny's angry, distraught face floated in her mind, and she herself felt a painful pang of resentment.

"To whom?" enquired the witch politely when she gave her the piece of paper.

The fact that a bird would know where to find him, whereas she, his best friend, didn't have the slightest idea, tasted sour.

"Harry Potter," answered Hermione flatly. "Thank you."

As soon as the witch turned around to disappear in the back-room, she regretted not having written anything more, and guilt crept inside her heart. But then, he wasn't writing either. Her throat was still burning from her vomiting, her insides were churning from hunger, and she felt dizzy. She needed sugar and fresh air or she would collapse. Hermione glanced at her watch; it was nearly ten in the morning; Nat would only be waking up now and his breakfast was ready. She had a little less than an hour to clear her thoughts, and it was best the little boy didn't see her in such an erratic state of mind. Readying her wand, she walked to the Apparition Point.

/\\/\\/\\/\\

The icy air soothed her throat and most importantly her nerves as Hermione walked down the Diagon Alley. Her eyes were prickling from the cold and she was squeezing between her bluish fingers her thermos of coffee she had magically warmed up. She had apparated right in front of the stoop of Gringotts so she could have the whole winding street to go down, before exiting to the Muggle world through the Leaky Cauldron. But as she passed the familiar shops and buildings, a bitter nostalgia was gnawing at her.

The Diagon Alley was merely a pale shadow of the lively avenue it used to be before the war. It hadn't been difficult to magically refurbish the vandalized buildings. The broken windows had been fixed, the unhinged doors mended, the burnt, damaged walls repaired. The storefronts were as shiny as ever, but for many of them, there were no more owners to run them – the windows staying dark and dust covering the unsold wares. The opened ones seemed almost just as lifeless, the rare clients not lingering inside, the curfew, the raids and the lurking threat of Death Eaters still too vivid in their memory. Hermione could see it in their eyes as witches and wizards looked nervously over their shoulders, as mothers clutched firmly the hands of their children, and everyone walked with small, quick steps, their shoulders hunching once outside in the street.

There were far fewer people too, and not only because of the heavy death toll of the war. Many had left the British Isles, gone for other European countries or fleeing to the other side of the ocean, to the American continent. They were running away from the memories, the front pages of the newspapers, the posters on the walls and the memorials in their workplaces; they didn't want to remember the deadly darkness that had shattered the Wizarding World.

Hermione wondered what life looked like at Hogwarts; the school was half-deserted she knew. Not many had come back, even fewer had accepted their first letter, their parents preferring to send them to Ilvermorny or Beauxbatons. She couldn't blame them; she had been unable to bring herself to return to Hogwarts either, not now that the memories of everything – everyone – that was gone haunted every corner. The Ministry had accepted her in a traineeship program without any further requirements regarding her studies, but she had nonetheless asked Professor McGonagall for the permission to take her NEWTs partly by correspondence, poring over seventh-grade textbooks whenever she could.

Hermione paused, distracted by the colorful front of another familiar yet closed shop. They had all helped George to rebuild the partly destroyed Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, and Charlie had even offered to stay and help him for the time he needed to find new staff. But the day of the re-opening, George had looked at the shop sign, waved his wand and turned back on his heels. Now it read Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and dust was forming a thin layer over the Nose-Biting Teacups, the Skiving Snackboxes, the Fanged Frisbees, and all the weird, colorful bric-a-brac displayed in the shop window. Hermione turned away, sipping her coffee and shivering from the cold.

Even though it wasn't freezing, the winter had been until then exceptionally cold, and the end of January had been drowned in a quasi-continuous, dreary drizzle, with a forceful wind blowing over the slate roofs of London. Hermione stepped carefully on the slippery cobblestones of the Diagon Alley, feeling guilt-stricken from the soles of her thick leather boots to the tips of her fingers, holding her hot thermos, as she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye the dark forms crouching in the corners. Witches and wizards, young and old, hugging their filthy cloaks and coats to them as they sat on the wet sidewalk or the dirty stoops of the houses, their lips chapped from the cold, their faces grayish, emaciated, having lost their homes and their wands, be it because of the Death Eaters or because they were suspected of being affiliated to the latter.

Shoving her thermos back inside her bag, Hermione accelerated her pace, striding down the second half of the Diagon Alley. This walk had certainly cleared her thoughts; she had absolutely no right to lament over her life. After passing through the magical brick wall that hid the entrance to the Diagon Alley, she crossed the half-empty Leaky Cauldron and exited on the muggle side of the pub. She was immediately assailed by the noises of the traffic, the hooting of car horns, the screeching of brakes, the roar of motors, and swallowed by the dense crowd pressing on the sidewalk. The contrast between the two worlds couldn't have been sharper, mused Hermione, contemplating the broad muggle avenues.

From there, she wasn't far from home, having chosen a flat at the boundary between Muggle and Wizarding London. In the crush, she stumbled on the outstretched leg of a homeless man, who was sitting between the waste containers that surrounded the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron.

"I'm sorry," she muttered apologetically before starting up the street.

The man's head shot up, his pale, sunken eyes peering after her from under the hood he had drawn over his forehead. He stared, motionless, at her back as she walked away, hidden from time to time by the passers-by around her, oblivious to the gaze following her. The man stood up heavily, grabbing at the wall with his bony, dirty hands to steady himself on his feet. He readjusted the hood so his face was still hidden in the shadows, and sticking his hands into the pockets of his long, black coat that hung miserably off his shoulders, edged along the walls after her.

Hermione was walking quickly, impatient to get back to the little boy, who had probably woken up and was waiting for her at home. She turned several corners, leaving the main roads for neat little streets lined with plane trees and Victorian buildings, not noticing the tall, male figure still following her. She went up the front steps of one of the houses and stopped before the door, looking inside her bag for her keys. She pushed the heavy door panel and entered the small entrance hall of the building to the familiar smell of bleach coming from the recently washed stairs with a wrought iron handrail and that zigzagged up the floors.

Hermione paused, her back turned to the door as she searched inside her bag again, this time for the key of the Muggle mailboxes on her right. She felt a gush of icy air that bit the skin of her legs despite the thick tights she was wearing under her skirt, and the entrance door that hadn't completely closed creaked behind her. With a metallic clanking, the keys fell onto the tiled floor, and her head was smacked against the wall. Large hands grabbed her by her shoulders and spun her around, slamming her back against the door that banged shut under the shock. Hermione gasped, tiny white lights popping in the blackness suddenly obscuring her vision, all breath knocked out of her lungs as the doorknob poked painfully into her ribs.

A rough hand curled around her throat, holding her in place, and the young woman instinctively brought her hands up to try and pry it away while her knee shot up to meet the crotch of her assailant. A hoarse groan followed, the hand let go of her throat and the man staggered away. Before her vision even came back fully into focus, Hermione plunged to her fallen bag, snatched it from the floor and scampered into the corner. Her fingers closed convulsively around her wand she pointed at the man through the leather of the bag. He was bent in half in the middle of the entrance hall, his hands on his knees and his breath wheezing in pain. Of him she could only see the coat – way too large for his thin frame and with dirt smeared all over it – his tattered black trousers and worn-out shoes. His head was hidden beneath his hood. Hermione remained rooted to the spot, adrenaline pumping in her veins and her heart pounding wildly. She took out her wand fully, too frightened to care whether he was a Muggle or not. The man caught her movement and flinched.

"Wait… Wait…" rasped out a vaguely familiar voice she failed however to recognize.

He took a step back, tripped and fell to his knees. His hood slid off his head, revealing dirty, matted, white-blond hair that fell across his forehead and over his pale gray eyes that had a demented look in them. An equally dirty, blond growth was eating the lower half of his face.

"Wait… You have to help me…" he sputtered hoarsely. "Granger, you have to help me…"

Horrorstruck, Hermione stared into his face. Beneath all the grayish dirt streaking his pale skin and all the hair, one could still guess the outline of young, aristocratic features, even though rather emaciated. The quicksilver eyes, them, were unmistakable. Recognition flashed across Hermione's face.

"Oh my God…" she breathed, petrified.

"Don't let them… Don't let them take what's left…" he was continuing madly, casting around the wild looks of a cornered animal. "Granger, you have to help me…"

Still on his knees, he slumped further, his palms on the floor. Horror, confusion, fear, and disgust battling to take over her face, Hermione watched as he crawled across the distance between them and his hands clung onto the hem of her coat. She gasped and recoiled, her back hitting the wall, her wand leveled at his face.

"Malfoy!" she shrieked.

"Please…"

Merely a whisper. Something in his voice, broken and hoarse from the cold, was liquefying her brain. Her reason was screaming in the back of her mind: 'Call the Aurors! He is on the List! He is a fugitive! You have to hand him over to the Ministry!' He was a Death Eater. The Ministry was supposed to deliver his sentence as soon as they would get their hands on him. In the storm of thoughts raging inside her head, a picture emerged, standing out sharp and clear and impossible to ignore. The empty shell of a man chained to an iron chair after the Dementor's Kiss. Her lips formed the words before her brain could thoroughly process them.

"Move. Up the stairs. Slowly."

A long shudder shook Malfoy's whole body and he let out a ragged breath of relief. Letting go of her, he stood up clumsily and moved to the staircase at the other end of the hall, taking slow, measured steps and watching her wand out of the corner of his eye. Like in a daze, Hermione followed a few steps behind, her wand aimed between his shoulder blades. Her mind was frozen, failing to understand what she was doing, and even more to decide what she was going to do next. They climbed the stairs with an excruciating slowness. Malfoy was gripping the handrail with both hands as though he was about to fall. Hermione thought she saw him sway dangerously several times and prepared to jump sideways in case he was going to fall down the stairs. To her greatest relief, they didn't run into any of her neighbors, and when they reached the landing of the fourth and last floor, her plan was ready.

"Stop," she snapped.

She was surprised to see him obey immediately. But then, she had a wand, and he could barely stand upright, the stairs having apparently drained him of what little strength he had. He leaned against the wall, his eyes glinting dully in their sunken sockets as he watched her go around him, staying as far as she could – and to the only door of the landing. Hermione's nose crinkled unwittingly – in this smaller space, the air was thick with the awful stench of rot and unwashed human body that floated around Malfoy.

"Sit," she ordered.

The young man slid down the wall and onto the floor.

"Petrificus totalus," muttered Hermione and his body became rigid. "I'm not calling the Aurors," she added coolly, answering the mad panic that flashed in his eyes. "But you'll have to wait."

She unlocked the door and opened it just a crack to slip inside, before quickly closing it. She dropped her bag onto the floor, took off her coat and scarf, and forcing her lips to form a calm, warm smile, went to the open kitchen. Nathaniel was sitting at the table behind the counter and didn't look up when she moved closer. The piece of fruit cake had disappeared from the plastic box and his glass of milk was empty. The little boy was now focused on eating the chocolate-coated cornflakes he was taking one by one out of their jar to put them on a spoon and eat them one at a time.

Hermione squatted next to his chair and ran a hand through his soft hair, before rubbing small circles on his back. He had changed his flannel pajamas for a pair of denim dungarees and a beige knitted sweater. His big, hazel eyes were still fixed on his spoon but his face split into a wide smile and he leaned into her touch.

"I haven't been too long?" she asked softly.

The little boy shook his head, carefully chewing a cornflake.

"We are having a guest," said Hermione in a low, soothing voice.

The child reached for the jar of cereals and took another cornflake.

"Lulu?" he mouthed before bringing the spoon to his lips.

"No, not Lulu. Lulu is coming later. You don't know him."

She watched Nathaniel anxiously. He paused, before shaking his head, a crease appearing between his small eyebrows. Hermione sighed and closed her eyes briefly. Bloody Malfoy!

"I know you don't like meeting strangers," she continued softly. "That's why I wanted to ask you if you could go to your room and prepare the beautiful drawings you made for Lulu while I'm busy with him? Would you do that?"

The little boy seemed to consider the question for a moment, then slid from his chair, and staring at the tip of his shoes, went to pick up the drawings scattered on the floor of the living-room. With a frown of concern, Hermione watched him trot to his room and close the door, still without looking at her. Cursing under her breath, she strode to her own room; Malfoy had to stay as far as possible from the child. The only guest room of the apartment being occupied by Nathaniel, her own bedroom became the only place where she would have to keep Malfoy for the moment. Trying not to think that it was soon going to be invaded by the presence of an extremely filthy, very probably insane, former Death Eater on the run, she walked around the neat room, putting up various wards and sound-proofing it. When she was done, she went back to the apartment door, making sure that Nathaniel was still in his room, and opened it wide, looking down at Malfoy's seated, motionless form.

"Come in," she commanded, flicking her wand to free him from the Body-Bind Curse. "Don't say a word until I allow you to."

Malfoy stood up unsteadily and went inside the apartment, his eyes scanning warily every corner as though he expected an army of Aurors to surround him. Her wand pointed at him, Hermione locked the door behind them and silently beckoned him to her room. He had the decency to go around the carpets, and once in her bedroom, stopped in the empty space between her bed and the wardrobe. Closing the door, Hermione went to stand on the other side of the bed. For a long moment, she just watched him, the idea that Draco Malfoy was in her room slowly sinking in her mind. She had the impression that a deadly weight was crashing down on her, all the emotions she had been bottling up since she had woken up this morning threatening to burst out with another surge of nausea.

Malfoy was looking around the room, blinking slowly, and the little Hermione could see of his face was devoid of expression. She noticed that his hands were trembling spasmodically, probably from the cold and exhaustion and nervous tension all at once, and she felt a pang of pity. She refused however to soften before knowing the reason of his presence. She took a deep breath.

"Speak," she said, her voice coming out more high-pitched than expected. "What do you want from me?"

Malfoy's gaze focused on her. And then he collapsed, losing consciousness.

A/N: I apologize if you find any grammar/spelling/vocabulary mistakes. English is not my first language.