She does not know how they got here. She thinks back to that final frantic year when she, Harry, And Ron were on the run, when her faith in him had finally begun to crumble. Perhaps, she had thought, perhaps he is still dark. Perhaps there is nothing to fight for in him, nothing left to save. She would see his face in her mind, his unhealthy complexion and his hooked nose and his fathomless eyes, and she would see those hands that had long captivated her performing miracles with simple ingredients, and she would hear the low murmur of his voice as he lectured, and she would think, yes. She would listen to Ron's and harry's bitter speculations about him, as she had done so often over the six years of their friendship, and she would begin to see glimmers of validity in them, and she would think, no. The tug-of-war in her heart was endless and distracting and they could not afford distractions, so she forced him aside, forced her heart to beat normally, forced herself to breathe calmly. She could not think of him, would not think of him, except when she did.
Perhaps she thought of him briefly when she kissed Ron, threw herself into his arms because this was a battle and it was possible, some would have said likely, that they were going to die very soon and she just wanted to know. There had been a flame there once, always simmering softly in the background but never fully allowed to blaze and she wanted to know. There was urgency in the kiss, desperation and a certain kind of frenzied heat, but no real pull. Ron, it seemed, had other feelings and just when he would have deepened the kiss into something entirely inappropriate for the situation, there was his face looming in her mind. He seemed to be reproaching her, his eyes sending a clear message of what have you done? She had pulled away then, from both of them. There were far bigger things to do.
And then the Shrieking Shack. The horror of it still makes her shudder now, on fire in his bed. There had been so much blood, too much, no way he could have bled that much and still been alive. But he was, and he had given Harry his memories, a final offering to a world that had never known how to appreciate him and would not know how to appreciate his dying sacrifice. She would have cried if there had been any time. She would have stayed with him, given all she had to revive him, but seven years had taught her where she belonged and it was not there, not with that man. She held the jagged pieces of her heart together with sheer will and followed her boys back into battle.
He did not die. A hidden potion, she thinks, one last trick up his sleeve. He does not talk about it, not to her, not to anyone. She sees in his eyes every day that he regrets it, that he believes he was meant to die there in that dirty, forgotten place, that his time had run out and he had done all he could do and somehow, he cheated death. She has tried to convince him to leave the castle, leave his dungeons and his jars and vials and stacks of essays to grade, but he will not hear her. He fought long and hard to return to his old post once Voldemort had been defeated and the boy who lived once again lived to renew the wizarding world, and he will not give it up now that he has, despite all odds, succeeded. He was a constant presence throughout the N.E.W.T. year she took alone, the boys off to Auror training despite her advice, a presence she steadfastly ignored. She would not look at him, would not think of him as she tossed restlessly at night, would not tremble at the sound of his voice and the wonder of his continued life, except when she did.
It was he who finally came to her. As unlikely as it still seems to her, it was he who opened her door, stepped into her private space, backed her against a wall and kissed her. Perhaps in the beginning it was simply that she was there and she was willing and she had at long last learned to stem the flow of speech that had so annoyed him in previous years, but she likes to think that it has evolved into something else, something more. Naive Gryffindor that she still is, she lies beneath him and feels his incredible heat and his hands like velvet against her skin and she thrills at the way he says her name. "Hermione," he says, as though it is a prayer, a blessing. She is not Lily Evans and never wishes to be, but she holds tightly to the belief that one day he will open his eyes and see her before him as she is, unmanageable hair and unremarkable face and all, and at last find himself dissatisfied with the love of a ghost.