Chapter One

Falling Boulders

The walls of Hogwarts were crumbling, the stones breaking, people screaming, people dying. Blood, and dust were everywhere, the building, or what was left of it reeked with it. The school she spent so many years in was falling apart around her, breaking much like her heart. This was her secondary home, and they were losing it, slowly, but surely.

Hermione Granger ran with her two best friends Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter. They jumped over bodies, and rocks, the ground quaking beneath them keeping them unsteady. She tried to drown out everything around her. She wanted to wake up from this horrible nightmare. She wondered who was on the ground for she refused to look in fear of who she might see.

Fred Weasley was dead. She knew that much. He laid on the ground, eyes open, a last smile playing on his lips. It was a shock - a kick to her gut. She wanted to shake him, scold him, yell, and hit, but all she did was stare until Harry pulled her, and Ron away. They had to keep going. They had to keep fighting. They would fight forever, it was never-ending. They had virtually been fighting for seven long years. They've been on the run, they watched people die, and they stayed together.

They were called the Golden Trio. They were everyone's saviors in this war. Harry, the skinny, raven-haired young wizard with a lightening bolt shaped scar on his forehead was everyone's shining star on the blackest night. He was their hero. Ron, the sweet lanky, red-head she loved since she was young. And herself, the bookworm, stayed by his side through it all, since they were eleven, since their first year of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, and Wizardry. They were best friends from the start. Well... Sort of. It took a good month for her to grow on the two boys, and when she did they were together like cement, especially the last year living in a tent on the run searching for split pieces of Voldemort's soul called Horcruxes.

Hermione wanted to shower, eat, and sleep without the fear of being attacked, and murdered. She wanted to see her parents. She missed them. It took every bit of willpower she had to alter their memories, give them new names, and origins to keep them safe. She wanted to go home, and know that she was too. She wanted her childhood back. She never said any of this of course. She wouldn't complain, they had bigger problems to worry about. She could only imagine what Harry, and Ron were going through. Harry worried over them mercilessly. He would quite possibly die of guilt if anything happened to them because of his fate. Ron was not used to being without his family, without three square meals, or more a day. They were much thinner now, their torn clothing hanging off their bodies. They got a taste of Harry's life for the first time in their lives. She couldn't say she liked it, and that's why she didn't complain.

Everyday she hoped that they would make it. It was her greatest wish to live through it. For all of them to. She finally got her kiss. She had wanted to kiss Ron since she was fourteen, and she finally did in the Room of Requirement not even an hour ago. His concern for the houselves touched her deeply. After all those years of telling him how horrible it was to keep them as slaves he understood, he had listened. It was all she ever wanted from him, so she kissed him, and he kissed her back. They had to live through it. She wanted to live, but more importantly she wanted to live with him at her side.

Suddenly they stopped in the corridor, Ron, and Hermione colliding into Harry's back, and soon she found out why.

"Ginny, get back," Harry bellowed at Ron's sister.

Ginny, her friend, and Harry's girlfriend was fighting out one of the broken windows down at unsuspecting deatheaters below. She gave him one quick, but lethal glance. "Do what you have to, Harry."

"I told you to stay in that room! Ginny, I'm not telling you again!"

"Good!"

"Do as he says," Ron ordered, forgetting momentarily that he was never able to tell his little sister what to do. She was too independent, too fiery, and when she wanted to be, too scary.

"Bugger off Ron! I'm not opposed to hexing you!"

Hermione switched feet nervously, spells going off around them. They could be hit at any moment, and they were wasting time. "Let's go," Hermione pleaded. "Harry, what do we have to do next - "

"Ginny!"

Hermione stopped at the sound of Ron's strangled scream. She spun around, her dirty brown hair flying in her face. Ginny was thrown off her feet by a great falling rock. It had collided with her shoulder, and she was bleeding, red soaking her black robe, but wasn't crying. She was holding her wound, writhing on the floor, her vivid hair splayed out on the pebbles, and dirt. They knelt next to her, and she screamed.

"Go! Please, go! I want this to end! Harry, do what you need to make this war end!"

"I'm trying," he argued back. "Lets get you to the Great Hall first." He held out his hand to help her up, but she swatted it away.

"I can get up myself. I don't need to go there."

The Great Hall was where they were sending them fallen, and the injured. Hermione went to talk sense into her, watching the blood flow freely down her arm, but Ron beat her to it.

"Gin, are you mad? You're bleeding!"

"Always one for the obvious," she spat, pushing herself off the floor, Harry's hand jerking to help, but keeping a safe distance in case she decided to bat at him a second time.

Slowly they stood up with her, and Hermione had the inexplicable feeling that they were being watched closely. That's when she saw Bellatrix staring back at them maliciously from out of the corner of her eye. The woman with wild hair, dead eyes, was Voldemort's right hand. She tortured Neville's parents into insanity, killed Sirius Black (Harry's godfather), Ron's uncles, and who knew how many others. She was raising her wand, and she panicked.

"Ron!" She grabbed his large hand, and as he spotted Bellatrix pulled her towards him, behind him to safety. She tried to fight with him, her wand in her grip, but he refused to let her pass. "Ron," she cried only to be pushed back again.

A small boulder fell from the shaking ceiling, and Hermione felt her head splitting. It felt wet, and she knew that her hair was being matted with blood. She heard her friend's screams, saw a blinding green light. She yelled, or she thought she did, she wasn't sure. She tried to keep her eyes open to see who was hit. Who was killed. Was it her? Would she ever know? Please don't let it be them. Please... Everything died away in a haze.