Author note: So this is my first fanfiction on this site and thank you for choosing to read it, reviews and criticism are welcome. Uhm...so, Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own the artfully and intricately sculptured world that is Harry Potter, the beautiful wonder that is J.K. Rowling does.

Chapter 1

Prologue

Hermione found it odd that she could find peace at a gravesite and yet hate everything to do with death itself. She disliked anything to do with funerals to the point that she didn't even like the colour black, well except on Harry, he looked good in it.

But it was their secret spot, Dumbeldore's memorial that is. It was a place they came to forget about the rest of the world, a place they could talk quietly, without interference and somewhere no one could find them. It was also quiet and no fighting was allowed and best of all, it was peaceful.

So that's where she found herself today, sitting on a bench, not so far from Dumbeldore's grave, leaning into Harry's side. Her own personal solace, well her and Harry's. They'd been dating for a year now. She'd dated Ron for 6 months after the war, but it hadn't worked out. There just wasn't enough chemistry and they ended up fighting more than anything, so in the end they decided to call it quits. Hermione was fine with having hima as the annoying but lovable brother she never had.

Dating troubles weren't Hermione's concern though, it had been the war that had been plaguing her mind. Two years should have been enough to get over most of it, but did someone ever truly get over something like that. A tortured mind is what her's felt like, Harry wasn't any better. Her thoughts had always been filled with facts and figures and now all she could think of was the screaming and mangled and bloody bodies of the dead.

Never had Hermione ever dreamed that her reality would be so messed up and yet funnily enough she wouldn't change it for the world. Death might might plague her dreams every night and the press could sometimes be over bearing, but she couldn't imagine her world without magic or a world without her adopted family, friends and Harry.

"How do you suppose dying is like Harry?" Hermione asked. She'd been wondering about it for a while now, but she hadn't found the time to ask, though with their setting and all now seemed right.

"Painless and quicker than falling asleep...or at least that's what Sirius told me." said Harry. Hermione supposed he was right, having heard it from a dead person himself, but she couldn't quite wrap her mind around something.

"I fail to see how a death like Fabian and Gideon Prewett's could have been painless." mumbled Hermione.

"You confusing the process of dying and actually dying Mione." Harry told her, staring peculiarly at her as she stood and started circling Dumbeldore's grave.

"Dying is the action before you die, its like calling a foetus a baby a week after finding out you pregnant, when actually the embryo is still undergoing cell division, the foetus is only really a baby at like 4 months, so yes, while the process of dying can be painful, actually dying is not." finished Harry.

Hermione gave a thoughtful expression, but didn't reply. He was right, but she still couldn't picture all those who had lost their lives during the war. Hermione couldn't bring herself to picture how dying was, it was an action so complex and intricate, that even Merlin wouldn't have been able to understand it. Dying...it seemed so foreign to her and yet so close to home.

Hermione quickly dismissed her thoughts, she'd been giving too much thought to death lately and instead she busied herself with adorning Dumbeldore's grave with white roses. The roses wove themselves around the marble tomb like vines on the side of an old mansion. Then she made some emit different bright colours, like christmas lights, so that they shone to make a galaxy like pattern.

"He would have loved those." whispered Harry. They would have complimented him nicely, thought Hermione. The different colours that showed the loving for colour their professor once had and the pattern that gave a sense of wonder, as the twinkle once did in Dumbeldore's eyes.

And then without knowing what overcame her, because usually she had such a good emotional filter, hot tears slipped one after the other down Hermione's cheeks. " Are we okay Harry?" asked Hermione, voice quivering.

Harry, who had been watching the roses in wonder, looked up at the brunette and at the sight of her, immediately rushed to her side. Quickly Harry wiped away her tears and engulfed her in an embrace. "We'll be okay Mione, we'll be okay." He told her in a soothing tone. He told her the only way he knewohow, beacuse they wouldn't wake up tomorrow and feel better, being as scared as they were, but time would heal their wounds. And even then they wouldn't be completely healed, but Harry, Ron and Hermione would have to live and bear with the pain.

And Hermione knew it too and believed it and those three words rung out clearly to her as she felt comforted in Harry's embrace.