She shivers as a sharp wind rips through her clothing. Wind is pushing everything around; it ruffles the grass, creaks the tree branches, rustles the leaves, and scuds the clouds across the sky. A violent gust makes her hair dance wildly, and only the gravestone stands immovable. Irrevocable.

She stands in front of it, right hand holding her flowers tightly and left hand clutching the red woolen scarf around her neck. She closes her eyes against the wind and sways a little.

She remembers two boys who were everything to her, who made up her existence and wrote her life story. She remembers the tall gangly redheaded one, who was silly and sometimes cruel and sometimes, she thought in exasperation that he'd never grow up. She remembers the shorter messy-haired one too, who was tragic and wore dorky glasses and had bravery enough for all of them. She smiles because she can still see them curled up in a sofa by the fire in the common room; hear their boisterous laughs, loud and long… and she wipes away a tear because it's only in her head.

She remembers how they would plead and cajole and flatter in exchange for homework help. "Help?" she'd reply scathingly. "It's called cheating." And she remembers how she'd always do it in the end.

She remembers how the first one would stick up for the second one when the whole school muttered nastily about him. She remembers how the one with glasses would always win at Quidditch; always win because he flew without fear – standing on his broomstick 500 feet off the ground, straining his arm toward the fluttering Snitch. His fingers never even shook, but her anxious face was always as white and paper-thin as the flowers she clutched now in her hand.

She also remembers when he was afraid, when a menacing shadow fell across the wizarding world, and when he had to face that shadow. With his best friends by his side, but alone in the end.

How dare you save the world to leave us alone and broken? How dare you?

She reaches out and traces the letters on the gravestone, the rough stone scraping her finger:

HARRY POTTER

Harry the Hero, the Chosen One. The wizarding world thinks he was a hero, but she thinks scornfully that they don't know the half of it. Of course Harry was a hero. Honestly.

But not because he defeated Lord Voldemort.

He was a hero every single day. He was a hero when he tried to keep his cool with Professor Snape, when he coldly told a pretty girl that yes, chubby Neville was his friend. When he tried to keep the peace between his two hormonal friends, when he refused to lie about Voldemort and stubbornly stuck to the truth even though it landed him in detention time after time. When he tried to live up to his parents, when he risked expulsion to teach people defensive magic because he truly believed it could save their lives. When he tried his hardest to be brave and true and kind – and that, Hermione Granger thinks, was every single moment of his life.

She cries out as the wind almost blasts away the scarf around her neck. In the moving, swirling world, the only thing that seems solid and constant is the gray slab of stone in front of her. She kneels in front of it, cold hands holding down her shaking legs, eyes focusing on its steady grainy surface: but the gravestone is not what she sees, and the wind is not what brings tears to her eyes.

Harry, green eyes blazing and wand pointing at Voldemort's heart, uttering a terrible spell in a harsh voice she has never heard before.

Harry crumpling as Voldemort's screech echoes, hitting the ground even before his wand clatters down, face screwed up in pain.

Harry leaping out of his chair two weeks later to greet Ginny, and the mortified look on his face when his legs give out and he hits the floor.

Harry sitting on the Weasleys' back porch and smiling without his eyes, telling everyone else to go on… he just feels like watching them play Quidditch.

Harry lying in a bed at St. Mungo's, eyes closed and rasping slow shallow breaths, an emaciated arm flung over the covers.

Harry softly smiling in his new bed – the one that he will never leave – almost the same old Harry, black hair tangled and dorky glasses; but there's no sparkle in his green eyes, because he's gone and isn't ever coming back.

She opens her eyes with a gasp, not knowing when she closed them or started holding her breath. She pushes the images out of her head, out of her heart and soul and tries to fling them on the wind, to somewhere where it will take a thousand years for them to creep and crawl and slip through her cracked defenses to find her again. She is so good at keeping facts in her head; so bad at pushing them away.

She looks at the gravestone, constant and unmoving in the swirling, shivering world around her. Just like Harry, who was just as steady and stubborn. He was the first person she'd want on her side in a fight; and when the world around her was falling apart, shiftless and uncertain, he was always there to depend upon. But that part of her life is gone, reduced to this gravestone in Godric's Hollow. Her present is uncertain and could take any direction, like the leaves that are moving, shaking, blown everywhere by the wind.

I'm just one of those leaves now, she thinks. Before I was important – I was the wind that was blowing the leaves, because I was with him – but now I'm one of the masses, blown this way or that way, because it doesn't really matter what I do or where I go.

She helped save the world, and what seems important after that? That is when every story ends; he took the story to the grave with him. She is eighteen, and all she has left is memories. It was a story drenched in tragedy, she thinks, but I'd be a fool if I didn't know it was held together by love.

And Harry was love. She knows it was his powerful love that defeated Voldemort, but that isn't what she remembers. Without him, the other two would never have survived the early years' constant bickering and malicious jabs. He kept them together until they loved each other, not just him, and then he ripped them apart when he died. The story was of the trio, the unbreakable trio, but he broke it. She never sees the other boy anymore, never can bear to put herself through the pain. It's one of the great mysteries of life that's there's room for three, but not enough space for two.

Two months after Harry Potter killed Voldemort, he died himself.

Neither can live while the other survives.

…Too bad part of Tom was in Harry. He was weak after Voldemort died, so weak; he didn't know who he was anymore.

That was what he was meant for; there was nothing for him after that. He never got to live, she thought tearfully. He never got to live.

Neither did I.

She jumps guiltily and drops her flowers in surprise. My carefree childhood was taken away as much as his was. His story may be the most important one I'm in, but I can have my own too. All the chains linking her to the past, imprisoning her in that old life, burst free with the realization that she has been given another chance. For the first time since Harry's death, instead of feeling caught in this graveyard, abandoned and guilty – she feels wildly, inexplicably free.

When someone dies, life goes on. But not in this case. It starts over, she resolves. New story.

And as Hermione Granger's carefully selected lilies are blown all over the cemetery, she laughs and leaps up to dance amidst the swirling leaves.

X X X X X X X X X

A/N Ok, that ending popped out of nowhere. Even when I try to write a tearjerker, happy endings still come out! I can imagine Hermione Apparating immediately to the Burrow, can't you? I think she'll make up with Ron… I'll probably write that little sequel – and post it, if anyone's interested.
By the way, I don'tthink Harry is going to die. A friend told me that she's certain he will, and she inspired me to write this… although it won't ever happen. Harry Potter just doesn't die – that's like, the whole point of the books!

Anyway. Thank you, and please review.