A/N: A little song that one day I realised was very easily applied to one of our favourite couples... My attempt at an angst song fic, see how it goes shall we?
In that big, big house, there are fifty doors, and one of them leads to your heart.
In the time of spring, I passed your gate, and tried to make a start...
Hermione passed through the halls of Hogwarts, past the many doors and windows, acknowledging the portraits on the walls, the statues and armour saluting her in greeting. The Head Girl was making her last rounds of the castle.
In all her years here, she had never yet imagined life without Hogwarts. How could she? It was all she had ever known of the wizarding world. She had so many suggestions, so many offers from so many people. What would she do with herself, now she no longer had to study to prove herself to society? Probably continue to study, she thought morosely to herself. It's all she knew, all she was known for, and her heroics in the war had done nothing but drag more of the irritating public eye towards her.
They depressed her, no one knew a thing about her, except she loved books and thanks to that had managed to help the One Wonder Boy (as she now called him) defeat the despot Voldemort. She had no friends, and the closest things she had to relatives and family were her teachers and her books. Her life was Hogwarts, and she didn't know how to manage without it.
Despondent and dejected, she trailed the halls, smiling with a half effort at the castle inhabitants. She was not full of the excitement of her peers at leaving, not eager to consume the sumptuous leaving feast, and least of all, she was not looking forward to the Farewell from her teachers.
The Farewell was a kind of ceremony, a parting, a goodbye, thrown by the Professors for the leaving class of seventh years. It was held in a room off the Great Hall that only ever appeared at the Leaving Feast, and what ever happened in there, was never spoken about. Even the excitement of something new and unique could not lift Hermione's spirits, and the actual goodbye from people she considered family was not something she was going to take particularly well.
And then there was him. He brought her awake in the mornings with his sneer of reality, concentrated her efforts in class with his sharp, piercing tones, gathered her thoughts in the evening with murmurs from the front, and lulled her to sleep in the black of night with the promise of dreams so real they made her never want to wake up. He kept her going, kept her in check, in line, made the sadness bearable, was an avid reminder that she was not the one worst off. And yet he was the one who seemed furthest from her, so far away from help. Never accepting, never kind, never the slightest warmth towards her.
Her prowls lead her towards the dungeons which harboured him. His door was the deepest she'd ever been, and she dare not delve further in towards the Slytherin's lair and the dank, stale, forgotten air. Exactly 50 portraits in, she knew it was his, seen him disappear into it many a night she'd come across him finishing his rounds to, watched him look at her with cold eyes and simply pass into nothingness.
What would he think of her now? No longer the bright, chirpy child of before, with her hand ever waving ever in the air. Now matured with age and battle scars, and a more sedate appearance, tone and movement. She flowed from class to class, still upright and proud, but with the grace of sadness, not elegance or joy. She was henceforth referred to as the "Stuck Up Know It All" by other students. No longer the original name he had given her, children were creative and ran with new ideas. No, she was not the girl he used to take points from. She quietly sat in the back of his class, worked on her own, which he surprisingly allowed, and neither asked nor answered a single question. He did not call on her, and their only correspondence was a glance or a look, or a red letter on her parchment. They occasionally caught each other in stare's across the hall and for a moment, she would see nothing but his eyes, and him disappearing into his door.
Surprisingly, she admitted to herself she would miss these dungeons. They a held a still calm peace not many other places in the castle could. She would miss her nightly forays, the intermittent instant in his presence, and the soothing whistle of the wind through the corridors.
She again ascended through the depths of the castle, past many doors and niches, neatly side stepping couples out saying their goodbyes without a backward glance, and moved towards the end of her rounds.
With tears in her eyes, she watched the rain fall from the Astronomy Tower, where she ended every night time round, and under the mild shelter of a weak repelling charm, wept for what she was about to lose.
A/N: For those interested, the song is Queen of Rain by Roxette, not one of their better well known ones, but I think it fits, none the less. More to come children... there is a whole song of lyrics to write about of course.