Reminder: Harry Potter is owned and tortured by J.K. Rowling.

Hermione Granger was smiling. But there was no joy in the smile. Her lips were tight and her eyes were dead. All that happened was her muscles pulled at the corners of her mouth.

Hermione Granger smiled because there was nothing left she could do.

He was gone. The battle had ripped from her the one thing that she wanted in her life, happiness. He would have been her protector and she would have been his salvation.

Even a week after the battle, she had not let herself cry. The smile never left her lips because if she stopped smiling, her world would fall apart.

She saw the looks that the others sent her, when they were not tied up in their own grief. They blamed her for still smiling when they all had bloodshot eyes. She felt the weight of their displeasure just as keenly as she felt the weight of her own heavy heart. But she could not stop smiling.

It had been her promise to him.

He had forbidden her to cry, telling her that tears were silly things. They did nothing to make the world a better place, but his eyes hinted that her smile could.

So she smiled, even when the pain grew almost too much to bear. She smiled when others around her declared her unfeeling and heartless. They did not understand the pain she felt just as keenly as they felt theirs.

She had lost someone in the battle as well. Not a twin like George. Not a father figure like Harry. Not co-workers like Mr. Weasley.

She had lost her love.

Two months after the battle, she found herself in a dirty old house surrounded by broken furniture. And there, in a corner slightly less dusty than the rest, she found it.

The floor boards were stained darkly in the faint light.

There, Hermione Granger let herself fall apart.

Tears flowed from her eyes, falling onto the ground before her. The pain that she had tried to ignore tore from her chest with sobs. She had no idea how long she lay there, shaking from the force of her tears. But finally she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up into a pair of familiar eyes.

The red-head took her in his arms and held her as she sobbed. He had seen the pain in her eyes every moment of the last two months.

After awhile, she looked back into his eyes and for the first time in a long time she smiled a genuine smile.

"Thank you."

Harry looked down at the Marauder's map, searching desperately for his friends.

But finally, at the very edge, he spotted two names very close to each other in the Shrieking Shack.

Hermione Granger and George Weasley.

A smile tugged at Harry's lips. Perhaps now his friends could truly smile again.

...Author's Note:

Death is always hard no matter what form you see it in. It could be the death of a pet, or the death of a lover. Please remember that people mourn in different ways. It is impossible for someone to know the thoughts of another, so do not judge those who do not think as you do.