Living with the Facts
Harry Potter was someone I watched from afar, someone I idolized. Two years beneath him, that was all that I could do, but I came to terms with it. Sometimes, I found myself subconsciously following his sixth-year scheduled free periods and I ended up in the library, at a back table, while he studied with Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. "The Golden Trio," as they were fondly known among the students, spent most of their time together, though I noticed that Ron and Hermione had that eye-sex thing going on lately, leaving poor Harry out of the loop when he needed his best friends the most.
How much I wanted to be like them. How much I wanted to have two best friends to support me through the good, the bad, and the ugly, who never left my side. The three of them had entirely different personalities, but they completed one another. I knew that Harry had never experienced love like that, and I could relate. We had similar pasts, though my parents were killed in a car crash and not by Lord Voldemort, and I knew that if he hadn't made friends with Hermione and Ron so quickly that we would have too much in common to ignore. I think that my great need for that wholeness of friends was the reason of my library visits to eavesdrop on the conversations of the Trio.
The few times I could actually catch words from their conversations I began to learn about the Horcruxes. From what I could gather, they were pieces of the Dark Lord's soul which Harry was assigned to destroy. I was glad this was not my task to undergo. Still, I would have loved to be in Hermione's position: loving and understanding support of The Boy-Who-Lived. If I was in her position, however, I think I would manipulate it a little differently; say, making a few passes at Harry and conveniently lending a shoulder and a pair of lips every time he needed a caring soul to listen to the great burden bestowed upon him.
I had to live with the fact that I couldn't be in this position, and I settled for sympathizing with the burdened young man from afar. I knew he didn't even know my name, but I learned to live with that as well. The harder thing to live with was the death of Headmaster Dumbledore. Harry wasn't the same after Professor Snape killed him, sending the respected Headmaster careening over the tallest tower of the castle, while Harry stood by watching. Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy ran away, then, leaving behind a mire of distraught students and staff to reconstruct a school.
The summer was full of killings and defenses being built against the violence, and there was no sign of Snape or Malfoy for months. McGonagall became the Headmistress for my fifth year and with her came tighter security. But Harry, Ron and Hermione didn't return to school that year. Justified rumor had it that they were searching for the Horcruxes. Most of my year was spent trying to find new ways to protect myself instead of watching the famous three. Many people suspected that "the Final Battle" between Harry and Voldemort would take place at Hogwarts, but they were wrong. It was in an abandoned mansion, from what the papers told; the old house of Voldemort himself. That was where Harry and his friends discovered and destroyed the next-to-the-last Horcrux.
The last one was destroyed in the battle, along with Voldemort, and Harry Potter did not return to Hogwarts. Nor did sweet Ronald Weasley return; he fell bravely, protecting the final Horcrux. Only Hermione Granger returned because she had nowhere else to go after Voldemort killed her Muggle parents. She should have already graduated, for by that time I was in my sixth year, but the Headmistress gave her a separate room, to grieve and to have a chance to graduate Hogwarts properly. I felt for her, and often cried for her lost friends while the rest of the Wizarding world shroud itself in black for the loss of their hero, all the while celebrating the loss of their tormentor.
I spied the broken Hermione in the hallways a few times. She looked older and wiser than eighteen, her face was always sad, her shoulders always slouched. The usual light was gone from her eyes, and yet she still looked as determined as the old Hermione. What I really wanted to do was approach her, talk to her, comfort her. But I knew that she didn't know me, and I would be no help to her.
Hermione Granger was now alone, but she ended up going on in life, dedicating it to protecting the innocent, avenging the name of Harry Potter. I became one of her employees, and while she missed sitting at the library table discussing Horcruxes with her two best friends, I missed watching them from afar.