Disclaimer: All the characters are owned by a certain Ms. JK Rowling, lord creator of it all.

Chapter One: The Absence

"It's a waste of time," Hermione said, scowling. Really, she didn't know what Harry was off about. She slumped down onto the headmaster's desk with a visible huff.

As Hogwarts changed headmasters throughout the years, each refurnished their office to their tastes. Dumbledore covered the ancient desk with a menagerie of silver instruments, Snape elected for the coldness of its bare mahogany, but Headmistress McGonagall chose something far more curious. Tiny shimmering multicolored puffs of fur now skittered up, down, and across the surface of the worn wood. The balls would respond to the Headmistress' slightest gesture, skittering to bring her a pen or sheet of parchment from within one of the desk's dozen drawers. Professor Flitwick declared it a testament to the witch's unrivaled mastery in Transfiguration. As the brightest witch her age, Hermione had been curious about the magical origins of these mysterious critters, but then she spotted a orange puff suspiciously similar to a hairball Crookshanks coughed up earlier that week, and decided she would delve no deeper into the mysteries of Minerva McGonagall's spellcraft.

The promotion of Professor McGonagall to Headmistress of Hogwarts was one of the few happy moments in what was a long and hard reconstruction. Even under the skilled wands of a dozen aurors from the Ministry of Magic, the outbreaks of fiendfyre raging within the castle took weeks to quell. All the better for that, for no one had the appetite then to rebuild. It was a time for the dust to settle, for the rain to wash away the grime of battle, and for the dead to be buried.

Fred's funeral had been the hardest. Whereas Hermione had felt a certain peace as Remus and Tonks were laid side by side in the good earth, knowing that the two lovers were together adventuring in that final frontier, the sound of Molly Weasley's sharp sobs still rang painfully in her ears. Eight heads of fiery red hair watching their ninth descend into darkness. George injected brief respites of levity throughout the ceremony, throwing a Skiving Snackbox down the hole- for "tricking the ol' overgrown bat in the hereafter," he said- and even firing off a set of Weasleys' Wildfire Whiz-Bangs in the evening. Dozens of sparking images of Fred's face appeared in the explosion, each with a comically over-pronounced nose or set of large flapping ears. George was all smiles and jokes, desperately trying to lightened everyone's mood. Yet, when no one else was looking, Hermione would catch him blankly staring into the distance, his eyes searching some far away point on the horizon, as if waiting for a loved one late for dinner to finally return.

"There are far more important things to be done right now," Hermione insisted, and no one could deny that was true. The rebuilding of Hogwarts had gone badly- the hope of reopening the school for the fall semester was now laughable. The aged stones of the castle kept their secrets. Many of the enchantments imbued in them by the four founders had long been lost to time. To save what magic was left, when possible, the walls were remade with rubble carefully mended rather than replaced with new masonry. Those mysteries that were ground to dust or reduced to smoldering ashes, such as the Room of Requirement- that haven to so many generations of young wizards and witches- were lost forever.

"It's the right thing to do," Harry replied. "He deserves to be here." He looked to the hanging portrait of Dumbledore for affirmation, but the image only winked at Harry from behind his half moon spectacles.

"Snape abandoned his post before he died, that's why his portrait didn't appear," Hermione argued. "I mean, it makes a certain sort of sense for him not to be here; he wasn't a 'real' headmaster any how-"

"He's as real as any of them!" Harry shook as he gestured towards the other portraits on the wall. "And as important too. He played his part Hermione, and saved us all. Don't you understand?"

Indeed she understood. Harry's words to Voldemort during their final battle inspired a rage of interest from all of magical Britain into the life and loves of Hogwarts shortest termed headmaster. Rita Skeeter's "Snape: Scoundrel or Saint" was published with miraculous speed, fueled by an insatiable public appetite that did not care to distinguish fact from fiction.

Yet, though Hermione knew the secrets the Pensieve revealed to Harry, the tragic heroism in Snape's last acts clashed against the will of her own reality. One view into murky waters and the pale floating strands another soul's past were swept away by waves of memories she collected with her own eyes, the insults she heard with her own ears, and the loss she felt in her own heart. She remembered the favoritism the man flaunted in every potions lesson held in those cold dungeons, the enjoyment in his eyes when he saw his students shake in fear of him. She remembered "I see no difference," and the hot sting of her tears. She remembered her heart aching as Ron held her at Dumbledore's funeral, the moment her innocence- that delicate faith of children in protection from fear, from death- was torn from her.

"He's no hero, Harry," she said, quietly.

Harry breathed a deep and weary sigh, turning his face away to gaze unseen at the portrait of Dumbledore once more. But the great wizard had fallen asleep, his deep snores punctuating the silence like a slow metronome. "It's alright Hermione. I understand."

She stared at the thin figure of the Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One who had so bravely faced his duty to die for them all now had to somehow live for them all. To put back together all that was torn asunder. Hermione didn't know which was a more impossible task to ask of someone. She gazed down as three orange puffs softly purred and tickled her hand.

"Alright," she finally sighed. "It doesn't hurt to try to find out if it's possible."

Harry enveloped her in a wide embrace. Hermione felt a tension in her spine she had carried for so many months slowly beginning to ease. He said nothing, but one look from Harry's now shining green eyes carried his thanks to Hermione.

"I can't promise anything, " she warned him. "Some of these old enchantments, well, no one really knows how to cast them anymore. The great twelfth century magical painter Horatio Locksley once claimed that…" Harry just smiled and nodded, as they walked arm in arm out of the Headmaster's office.