Title: Ever after

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter or Twilight characters. All characters are creations of Joanne K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer.

Rating: M (just to be on the sure side as it's the first time that I am writing fanfiction)

Warnings: for now probably only some adult language at worst

Pairings: Harry/Hermione, Twilight characters according to canon

That means Edward and Bella are together but will not be attending school as Edward turned Bella prematurely because of an accident that would have been fatal and they are now in Alaska to give Bella some time to adjust. Consequently there will be no Nessie.
I am also not sure what role – if any – Jacob and the Quileute tribe will play.

Summary: After the Final Battle Ron is dead and Harry missing presumed to have been killed in the duel with Voldemort. Hermione is left alone and after graduating opts to leave the Wizarding World. She comes to Forks to finish her Muggle education were she encounters several non-humans – one of whom resembles Harry Potter quite eerily.

Please note that in this story Hermione was born in 1980, therefore is two month younger than Harry. This is because it does fit better with the idea of her going to high school. I did not want her age to cause her to stand out even more than she would be anyway considering she is an newcomer and British on top of that.

Chapter I

Seventeen years old Hermione Granger wondered how different her life had worked out than what she had thought it would be only two years previously.

She had thought then that she would be surrounded by magic for the rest of her live, except for maybe visiting her parents now and then in the Muggle world.

Most of all, she had been convinced that she and her two best friends would be forever inseparable.

Of course, a war had been brewing at the time, Voldemort's return having just been recognized by the Ministry and the majority of the British Wizarding population after the fiasco at the Department of Mysteries.

But still in her naivety, because that was what it had been, she had thought everything would work out somehow.
After all, Harry, Ron and her had always come out on top of all of their previous adventures.
Maybe it was nothing more than hopefulness. But she had not thought that everything could go so wrong.

Yes, they had won the war.

Harry and Dumbledore had made sure of that.
Harry had been extensively trained during their sixth year and together with Dumbledore had sought out and destroyed all remaining horcruxes, the diary having been destroyed in his second year while Dumbledore got rid of the ring during summer after fifth year.

Of course, Dumbledore had paid for that last deed, the curse on the ring assuring that he would not make it another year.
In the end he had died protecting the students of Hogwarts at the end of their sixth year during what people had come to call the Final Battle.
He was struck down by no less than five killings curses from various death eaters who wanted to make sure that he did not copy the Boy-who-lived.

However, Dumbledore's life was not the only one that the victory had cost them. Many lives had been lost.
And it was certainly not the hardest blow for Hermione. Not at all.
What had her world spinning were the deaths of the two people she loved about all others (apart maybe from her parents).

Ron had been killed by Rodolphus Lestrange with a cutting curse to his stomach which had damage his inner organs beyond repair.
He had died on the battle field before anyone could even so much as try to get to him.

Harry ... what exactly had happened to Harry nobody knew for sure.
Many people had observed the confrontation between him and Voldemort, so intrigued by this particular duel that they forgot their own.
Some of them had paid dearly for that mistake.

And everyone watching had seen both Harry and Voldemort fall after they had been hit by the green light of the killing curse from one another's wands.

But somehow in the commotion caused by this event Harry's body had vanished. While Voldemort's body had been found exactly where he had fallen and eventually been cremated Harry's body went missing.
Nobody knew how or when but it simply could not be found.

Still, everybody had seen the Avada Kedavra curse strike him and had seen him crumpling.
Sure, he had survived the killing curse before but nobody who had been watching believed that to be the case this time.
Luck did not seem to have been that generous even for the Boy-who-lived.

So he was assumed to be dead even without a body to prove it.

And thus, for Hermione, the Final Battle had left her world in shambles.
Ron and Harry had been her closest, her only real friends in the Magical World.
The only ones who were able to accept the bookworm and know-it-all she had been when she first entered Hogwarts.
Their deaths hurt her more then she could ever express.

But most of all she was wounded by Harry's death ... because she never got to tell him how she really felt about him.

She had had a crush on him ever since their first year and with the years going by and her getting to know Harry better every year - not the Boy-who-lived whom she had first recognized on the train ride to Hogwarts but the real Harry, "just Harry" as she fondly remembered him pointing out now and then - she had fallen more and more in love with him every single year that went by.

But she had never found the courage to confess her feelings to him being aware of the rumours that she and Ron would end up together and Harry would end up with Ron's little sister, Ginny.

Of course, rumours alone should not dictate one's actions but she had also been unsure about Harry's actual feeling for her and for Ginny and had not known how he would react to such an admission and consequently had not wanted to destroy what they already had had.

But as they say hindsight is a bitch.
Now she would never know.

So after her graduation from Hogwarts not three month ago she had decided that she would take a timeout from the Magical world.
It simply hurt too much to stay there without the two people most important to her.

She had been looking for a place in the USA to finish her Muggle education because while she had been keeping up to date as much as she could during the holidays from Hogwarts she would need an official certificate as well if she wanted to build herself a life in Muggle society.

Her parents were staying back in Britain but had understood her wish for a change of scenery.
And as she was of age in the Magical and would be as well in the normal world come September 19 this really did not pose a problem.

She had, however, to admit the place she had ended up at was a somewhat … peculiar choice.
But she had wanted something quiet, remote even, and somehow this little town had called out to her when she had first read its name.

So, that was how she had ended up in Forks, Washington, further away from the Magical society then she had ever thought possible since first entering that world.

AN: Hi! I just wanted to say "thank you" to all of you who have shown an interest in my story. I am really happy about that!

I also would like to apologize that I have not updated at all since first publishing this story and that I have already modified the first chapter several times, but this is my first multi-chapter (hopefully) fanfic ever and I have not developed any routine so far, meaning I make things up as I go.

When I first published the first chapter it was because this idea had haunted me already for several month. After publishing I realized that just having a general idea is not necessarily enough to write a story and therefore I have been contemplating the background and the future development of this story for some time now.

I am also a little worried if I possess enough imagination to write a story at all but I really want to try.

So please bear with me. Thanks!

-Erynia