A/N: all right, here's the final part! this one is about renewal and strength, about falling down and picking yourself up again. it's a different kind of angst, but i'd say it's angst, nonetheless. this part lies in parallel to the first one, and i hope you can pick up the little spots that are meant to make you think back to the first part! i didn't even notice some of them in writing (there's one at the very end that may or may stand out, that i didn't notice while writing), so... there's that. anyway, please, enjoy, and i would love reviews! without further ado, i bring you the end of the clock!


There's a melody in every person's head, of past loves and soulmates and best friends; of despair and kindness and compassion, all mingled into one sound. It's a beautiful sound, of life and of death and of love.

Heartbreak is a gentle way of describing the shattering of a soul, the stealing of happiness. It's inevitable, coming down with a force like ocean waves. It aches and it tears and it destroys.

It's the end of the song, but the beginning to something different.

After all, when one door closes, another will almost always open.

Sometimes, it's painted a new colour. But, it can be said, that things change in the most peculiar of ways.


Nobody has told her to move on, to stop grieving. She thinks they might have, if they weren't afraid of what her reaction might be.

The thing is, is that Hermione knows, has known for a long time, that she can't continue like this. It's been one month. In that time, she's had time to remember the things she almost wishes she could forget, and time to grieve and time to grow happy again. It hasn't happened. She still holds a job at the Ministry, and they keep telling her that she can take her time, that they'll welcome her back when she's ready, and she'll remain in the same position. But that hardly seems fair, to fall down and not have to climb the ladder again.

There's something that doesn't appeal to her about working, though. She's completely all right with never having to get a job again. Before, there was an order to things. Now, everything is ruined, anyway.

She's living with Harry and Draco right now, and sometimes she hears them fighting, and Hermione thinks that they're suffering, too. Nobody says anything, and otherwise everything between the three of them is steady.

But she feels like she's done something wrong. Like she's forced herself her and forced her own grief and guilt on to them, in some attempt to feel less pain.

She wakes up in the night and shakes and cries and she thinks that she would be happier if she were dead, too. Just when things were getting better, and everything fell apart.

It all starts with her parents, really, whom she hasn't talked to in so long. She lifted the memory charm as best she could, but there were some . . . permanent effects that she couldn't quite diminish completely.

This, in a sense, is similar to the lingering portions of the Cruciatus curse in Pansy. The ones that had killed her. The ones that had brought this all up.

She takes a deep breath and focuses on her magic, which she's tempted to release, just to see things break. She had done that, before, right after Pansy had gone. She had sat there, on the floor of their old kitchen and cried, and her magic had branched out in anger, and glasses and plates and cups shattered, but she didn't care—couldn't care.

Harry found her, curled up on the floor and shaking with sobs. They don't talk about that. Hermione's glad, of course, but she always thinks that it's one of the most important things in her life right now, that it needs to be addressed. It's just . . . she doesn't want to address it. She certainly won't being saying anything about it.

For right now, she watches the days go by her in a blur. Oh, maybe she will get better, but, right now, she isn't okay.

Some part of her probably never will be.


"What do you dream about?"

Hermione jumps, and looks up to see Draco staring at her across the table.

"I don't dream."

He considers this, then shakes his head slowly. "Everybody dreams. Whether it's when they're awake or when they're not. It's just a human thing, something that can't be controlled."

"I'm empty," Hermione says softly. "I don't have dreams. I stare at stars and I wonder why none of them fall and I look at flames and wish they would burn within me." She takes a deep, shuddering breath and lets her eyes fall back to her hands. "I'm—existing. That's all."

It's silent for a moment, then Draco's voice breaks through, thick and heavy. "Did she ever tell you? What we went through that year?"

"She did, right before—" She cuts herself off, feeling herself go rigid. "Yes," she amends. "She did."

Draco nods absently. "She was like this, too, you know. Caught up in fear and grief and disgust—at herself, at all the things she could have done, could have been. And she didn't worry about herself enough." His voice is quiet now, twisting with emotions. "That was my mistake."

Hermione feels a surge of anger burst inside of her chest. "What, and you think you're the only one who made mistakes? As if it was only you who could have saved her?" She laughs, and the sound makes Draco flinch, but she doesn't care. Wind sweeps around her, and she thinks her magic has leaked from her body. But the words keep pouring out, a flood of bitter resentment and hatred—not for Draco, not for Pansy, but for herself.

"Maybe it's not your fault at all! Maybe it is. But that doesn't change the fact that she's fucking dead." Her breathing is harsh. She cannot stop herself from speaking. "She dead, and maybe it's your fault. Maybe it's not. But that doesn't change the fact that I let her hurt me! That you let her hurt you, and that everybody else let her hurt them! Maybe if none of this had happened, then I wouldn't feel like this now! Maybe if I hadn't ever forgiven her, I wouldn't be stuck here like this!" Her voice has risen with hysteria, her voice rubbed raw.

A sob rises slowly in her throat, and before she knows it, she's crying, curled in on herself and rubbing at her aching throat.

Draco offers her a hand it hold and she thinks that she holds on perhaps a little too tightly, but she doesn't think she's quite prepared to let go.

She hasn't cried, at all, since it's happened, and she thinks this is the first step.

After all, how can she go back from here?


It's another month before Hermione brews up the courage to talk to Harry. It's one of the rare days where the two of them are completely alone, Draco having gone to spend the day in the company of his mother and father.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Harry says, suspicious, and she gives him a small smile, that may or may not be a little bit sad.

"I wanted to talk about—that day," she says, slowly, the words like fire in her throat.

Harry nods after a moment. "I figured you might."

"Why haven't you said anything?" she whispers.

"You weren't ready."

"What makes you think I am now?"

He eyes her curiously, the smiles. "Because you asked."

She swallows down her rising panic. "Right. Well, I just wanted to—talk. I don't understand what's happening."

"Do you remember," Harry says quietly, "when Sirius died?"

Hermione bites her tongue, then nods.

"I think it's similar to that situation, isn't it? You only got to have her around for a year, and, well, you loved her. In a different way, of course, but . . . it's still love. And I remember how that felt, Hermione. I was angry and I was scared, and I thought that it couldn't be the end but it was."

"So many people you loved—"

"Are gone, yes," Harry says, reaching across the short distance between them to grab her hand. "So are a lot of people you loved. But to lose people now—and, from a war long since fought, no less—is hardly fair. And I'm sorry it has to be like this. I miss her, too, but I didn't know her the same way you did."

Hermione nods absently, and he draws back, something clouding his eyes. He sits there, and his fingers shake, and Hermione doesn't have the heart to say the words on her tongue.


"I don't really understand," Hermione says.

Ron gives her a curious look. "That's new," he says simply, and grins.

She rolls her eyes. "No, well, I don't understand about my magic. It's not in my control anymore. Not since . . ."

He nods in understanding, and Hermione thinks that this is a big change from the boy that kissed her when they were eighteen and seventeen, respectively.

"Well, my mum told us, a long time ago, about bonds. Emotional, magical, physical—just bonds, in general." He frowns. "I mean, it's an entirely different branch of magic, based on love and such. But it's such a big thing, isn't it? I mean, when a bond snaps, it breaks something more than the emotional bond, or the magical bond, or the physical bond.

"She said that everything is tied together with our emotions, our bodies, and our magic. So, say, when a magical bond breaks, it would make your emotions a buzz and your body wouldn't quite feel the same way, you know?"

"So, you think we were just too close and—?"

Ron shakes his head. "No, that's not how bonds work. If it was, then we'd all be messes." He offers her a small smile. "No, it's based on a—well, mum said it like—a pure kind of love. You know, that cheesy stuff that everybody stops believing in after their a kid? I mean, I imagine it's more than a romantic thing. Realistically, I think, were, say, Harry to die, I'd say something would snap.

"You and Pansy—well, you were in love with each other in a way I don't think I've seen many people fall in love. I saw it in my parents, and I think I see it in Harry and Draco, too. But . . . their stories aren't tragedies. Yours is. And that's what makes it worse."

"I don't understand. I'm an adult. I should have some kind of control over my magic, bond or no bond." She swallows. "It shouldn't be like this."

Ron gives her a grim look. "Magic is really fickle, Hermione. It snaps and it rears at things that logically don't make sense. In some senses, sure, it's understandable. If a wizard is being threatened, or he's angry, right? But I don't think you get to choose, exactly, how it goes." He shrugs. "It's just—part of the process. Your magic will go back to how it was eventually, lying dormant unless you ask it to not, but for now I guess it's just what you have to live with."

"When did you get so wise?" she mutters, a small smile ghosting over her face.

"I guess when you stopped being there for me all the time."

They stare at each other for a moment, and then a grin slides over his face, and Hermione feels laughter welling in her chest. Oh, things have already changed.

She can change this, too.


The shattering of glass is what wakes her up.

It's been another two weeks, and something's been not sitting right with Hermione lately. Something in the way Harry looks when he wakes up, the way Draco looks at him with something a little fiercer than worry lighting up his eyes.

A quick glance at the clock as she makes her way to the source of the sound tells her it's roughly four in the morning. She bites her tongue and holds her wand steadily at her side, though her hands tremble slightly.

She creeps into the kitchen, and there only person there is Harry. By his feet are the shards of china. His hands shake in such a way she's never seen before, and when he looks at her, she almost wants to cry.

His eyes are dead. Hollow, lifeless. Bags line the undersides of them, and they're glassy. Able to crack as easily as the dish on the floor.

He laughs, and Hermione flinches.

"I didn't think you would be awake."

Hermione stares at him, long and hard, then shakes her head slowly. "I wasn't."

Harry winces. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

Hermione exhales slowly, then does a short dance around the glass on the floor, and grabs her friend's arm gently, guiding him to the table and lowering him into a chair. His breathing is uneven, his skin pale and clammy. It's not right, she thinks as she sits beside him and offers her hand silently. He doesn't deserve this, after all the things he's been through.

"I can understand if you don't—"

"I don't know how to deal with it," he whispers, not quite look at her but squeezing her hand hard enough for Hermione to understand that he feels her there.

"Every time I close my eyes, I relive some part of it." He shudders, and Hermione swallows back her sudden panic. "Draco keeps telling me I can't keep going like this, that I'm burning myself out, but . . ."

"You use potions to sleep," Hermione whispers, and he nods stiffly.

"Dreamless sleep," he mutters. "They only let me have so much, though."

"It's not good for you."

"It's the only thing that helps."

Hermione feels bile rising in her throat and fights back tears. "There are other things. Talking—talking helps, doesn't it?"

"You haven't talked, though."

Harry lowers his gaze when she turns a sharp look to him. She softens slightly and nods. "You're right. I haven't."

"You can't expect me to—"

With fire burning in her veins, boiling her blood, she says, "I'll talk right now, if you do, too."

His eyes are closed tightly, but he eventually gives a short sigh and agrees.

Hermione feels her shoulders slump slightly. She takes three deep breaths in and out. "Well, what do you expect me to say?"

Harry's mouth twists into a small, distorted smile. "How you feel?" he suggests, and Hermione snorts.

"Well, all right." She taps her fingers against the table. "I feel—empty, I guess, most than anything. Like something's missing. Ron said something about bonds, and how emotion is tied in with magic and I keep going back to that day, when you found me there. And I think—I think I'm just wrecked. I don't know who I was. I don't want to be that person anymore, either. I want to be someone else, who doesn't only get to see the one she loves most while she's asleep. I feel whole, but I don't know how to feel that way." She rubs at her eyes, and notices Harry watches her with an expression she can't quite pin down on his face.

"And people keep saying I'll get better, but it's been nearly three months and I still feel exactly how I felt before, when I—" She stops herself, a sob wanting to escape her. Harry rubs her hand soothingly, and she tightens her resolve. "Before she died, I should have done more. Worked to save her, and instead I let her die. To some extent, it has to be my fault. It's not—it wouldn't make sense if it weren't."

She makes a strangled noise, and she thinks that it might take her a while to talk again. Harry doesn't tell her she's wrong, only looks her over with quiet curiosity.

"I see people. All the time. When I'm asleep, usually, but sometimes I think I see them in shadows or . . . or in reflections." He's silent for a count of five, then continues in a shaking voice, "They're all dead. All gone. But I see them in my dreams and in darkness and I wonder if they hate me. They should," he adds, catching Hermione's look. "I've wronged them, in a lot of ways, haven't I?"

"You did good, too," says a voice behind him, and Hermione looks up sharply as Harry jumps.

"Draco, I thought you were asleep."

Draco scoffs. "And leave you to break the china my parents got us for Christmas? I think not, Potter."

"Putting china above me, I see."

"No, you prat." Draco swats at his shoulder. "I think you breaking it left you a little more damaged than the bloody plates." He scowls. "Show me your feet."

"My feet? Draco, honestly—"

But as he complains, Draco rolls his eyes and presses himself against the floor, lifting Harry's feet to look at their bottoms. Hermione glances down at him, eyebrows furrowed, and watches him pull his wand out and mutter some spells under his breath. He stands up again once he's finished and glares at Harry.

"They were covered in blood!" he says, anger drifting into his tone. But, after a moment, Hermione shakes her head. No, not quite anger. Something deeper. It could be anger. It could be sadness, or relief, or fear, as well, though.

"No, they weren't!" Harry protests. "I would have felt that."

Draco narrows his eyes and points to a trail of the floor, where distinctly red footprints stained the wood. Harry follows his gaze and mutters a small, "Oh."

Draco heaves a sigh and worries at his lip. "I don't want you to be hurt, Harry. But I can't defend you if you're hurting yourself."

Hermione blinks, tears welling up in her eyes.

"You're hurting, too," Harry whispers.

Draco smiles wryly. "For now, yes."

"But . . . ?"

"But I'm facing my anguish and my grief. Harry, listen to me, you deserve so much. You deserve more than you give yourself credit for, and it makes me unhappy. To see you in pain, at all, makes me unhappy. You're the most important thing in my life right now. I won't let you continue to ache like this."

Hermione turns away, the word bouncing through her head. Deserve. You deserve it.

What did Pansy deserve? Pansy, who tried to hand Harry over to keep herself alive? Pansy, who hid herself away until she could hide anymore, who faced the Cruciatus when she tried to say "No" and woke up in the night to tortured screams?

Maybe in a different time, Hermione would have thought Pansy deserved what she got. Maybe, two years ago, she might have wished this on somebody like Pansy. But that's not her.

Pansy, the girl who cared more carefully for her best friend than for herself, who put herself through pain and fear and torture to see that made it out alive, only to wind up dying later. Pansy, who acted out of cowardice and fear and everything in between, who wanted to be brave and brilliant but couldn't, never learned what it meant.

Oh, but this girl was brave and brilliant in her own way, wasn't she? Bravery, to stand against the people that would have kept her safe, to endure a curse meant to hurt her, where any proper coward would have fallen to her knees and begged for forgiveness. Who told people it would be okay, who supported those who strove to make it okay, when she didn't believe the words herself. Who held her best friend's hand when he wanted nothing but a way out and told him that he deserved something good and whole and real.

That girl deserved life and happiness. Every part of her, from the fearful coward to the brave and brilliant witch.

She wipes at her eyes as tears begin to spill from them and faces Harry and Draco again. Draco has a protective hand on Harry's shoulder, his jaw clenched. Harry watches her with intrigue deep in his eyes.

"What did she deserve?" she whispers. "If good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things, what did she deserve?"

"She wasn't a bad person," Draco says stiffly. "She was a better person than most people I know."

"I know that, but . . . she believed she wasn't, and . . . well, it's about perception, isn't it?" Hermione bites her cheek. "Not everybody believes she was a good person."

"It's not about good people and bad people," Harry says quietly. "Nobody is wholly good nor wholly bad." He pauses, then a rueful smile crosses his face. "Well, I suppose Voldemort was, but he wasn't really a person. Anyway, what I mean is that there are people who make mistakes"—he glances at Draco—"and people who think they don't." This time, his gaze travels to Hermione, and rest there calmly. "Mistakes don't define a person. Everyone is capable of doing good things or of doing bad things. In the end, it doesn't make them a good person or a bad person. It doesn't change the way they'll wind up living. Whether or not they deserve to feel pain. It's kind of like . . . a game of luck. Sometimes the best people are the ones who wind up getting hurt the most." He shrugs. "Sometimes the worst wind up with everything they ever dreamed of having."

"But—," Draco starts to say before Harry rolls his eyes.

"Well, that's the way it is. You can't change it."

Draco gives Harry a withering look. "But it's not fair."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you? Life isn't fair."

"My mother assumed I would have a wonderful life, no matter what might happen."

Harry snorts. "And how'd that work out?"

"I'd say I'm rather pleased with it."

Hermione smiles and stands up. She has a lot of things to think about, but for now, exhaustion pulls at her bones.


The next day she goes to Pansy's grave. She hasn't been here since the funeral, she thinks, and she's rather afraid of what she'll face. But snow falls from the grey sky in lazy circles, and she remembers that it's nearly Christmas. But today is not Christmas. No, today is just a day. A day to talk and to be unhappy and to let the sorrow drown her. And that's okay. She'll come back her in two weeks with stories and smiles and something like joy in her eyes.

But right now she carries red roses in her arms and sets them against the white of the snow on the ground. Waving her wand and muttering the words beneath her breath, she casts a warming charm and sits down before the tombstone, shaking slightly.

"I'm sorry," she offers. The wind howls around her, some kind of response that ghosts gently over her skin.

She shivers, but she's far from cold. "I thought that it wouldn't happen. I thought that we could fix it. That was silly of me, to believe there was a way to fix things when they were already so broken. But, well, that's always been who I am, hasn't it? I tried to free the house-elves in fourth year." She smiles softly. "Well, I still think they deserve freedom, but perhaps not in such a forceful way.

"Things have been . . . tense, lately. I've not been great. I don't really think Draco has been, either, but he's so focused on Harry . . . I feel bad for them both, you know. They're suffering. From the war, from this . . . it's taking a long time to heal."

Absently, she twirls her wand in her hands. "But I think things are getting better. I wasn't sure if they would, but something just . . . snapped. And suddenly everything just shifted. Of course I'm sad. But maybe this is how things have to be. We don't really get to pick and choose our fates. The past will be the past, and the future will be every day after."

She's greeted by a cold silence, of course, and she stands up, tears dripping lightly down her cheeks. The past will be the past, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.


Christmas passes, and Hermione goes back to Pansy's grave five more times. On Christmas day, of course, but then she's accompanied by Harry, Draco, Ron, Blaise, Daphne, and Astoria. An invitation was extended to Pansy's parents, but they turned it down gently and said they would prefer to visit her on their own.

With each visit, she's brought something new. A new story to tell, a new emotions on her sleeve; something to say and to give. It makes things lighter. Her shoulders don't feel quite so heavy, the smiles she once offered effortlessly become easier and easier to muster. Oh, she still feels a hole in her chest, a symphony of saddened music humming within her, but now it feels like these things are sacred, belong wholly to Pansy, and will never be filled. She doesn't want them filled.

A bond as such as they had, she things, must mean something, even now. And if this is what it means, to be forever attached, to love someone who's already gone, then so be it. She'll love Pansy, the memory, the girl buried now, beneath the snow, for as long as she'll live.

Their time together was short. Too short. It's not fair, to lose things so young, to feel such pain pressing down on you before anybody else would even consider it.

But this had started out as a war. And war demands sacrifice, and sacrifice demands death.

Now, when she looks at her friends, she sees the marks the war has left on them. Harry, with his nightmares and his scars and his hollowed out eyes; Draco, with his aversion to people who try to touch his arms, with his faded Mark and the scars along his skin; Ron, with his broken family and his sudden wise words, with his losses and his fears and his bad habits.

She sees the things Pansy left behind in Astoria's smile and in Daphne's diligence and in Blaise's ideas of the future.

She sees it all in herself in the way she smiles in the morning and the shadows that lurk around corners that she faces in despair and fear. That fear, which grips her and controls her before she pushes it back and reminds herself that she never used to be afraid of the dark.

Four months have come and gone. She doesn't have to let go yet. She can still run with her head bowed. But as the weeks go by, four months turning to five, and eventually to six, she won't be able to.

Her magic is tame again, her mind clear—until it isn't, but she doesn't like to dwell on those moments, and as time presses further, they become less and less frequent, anyway. She's doing what Pansy would want, she thinks: moving forward.

But, then, she thinks that maybe Pansy wouldn't want her to move forward completely. To forget her and continue as though nothing had happened, when, really, everything had. Ever since that day outside of the café, when Hermione offered to retry, things have changed. To see light in darkness and to see darkness in light. To seek out the sound of sweet singing and to rejoice in it, before it disappears completely. To fall in love, and be in love, and love so deeply that nothing else seems to matter. To feel whole and complete and bright with every touch, every kiss. To feel despair looming scarily close, to fear that oncoming storm, but to face it head-on. Bravery, cowardice—a mingling of definitions and words that shouldn't matter but just do.

That's the difference, how everything has changed. Hermione once saw things in black and white, with small touches of grey shifting between them. Now, when she looks around her, she sees in vibrant colours and emotions that she can't quite place, that stir at her stomach, at her chest, in her head. She sees things more clearly, more colourful, fuller yet so much more empty. She feels blood trickle from her heart and strings pull at her shoulders. She hears the faint remnants of a soft melody and her heart beating and she knows she's alive, but that life is insignificant and empty and everything falls eventually.

She saw the fall in Draco, long before she could acknowledge he wasn't wholly bad; she saw it in Harry, after everything should have been over and yet it wasn't; she saw it in Ron, when he lost his brother and his family ripped at its carefully sewn seams.

She saw it in Pansy, from the very beginning.

She saw it in herself, when her smiles became vulnerable and her chest constricted with a feeling she can only call love. That's the turning point, the little shift in everything. That's when it began, she sometimes thinks. Or maybe that's where it ended.

A transition, of seasons and of years, of days and of months. Each beginning has an end, and each end has a beginning. Sometimes, you need to look a little deeper than what's on the surface, but suffering and happiness walk parallel roads to each other.

And Hermione's found herself straddling the line between the two. Maybe fear claws at her chest as shadows creep up on her, but she finds joy in the rising of the sun and the echoing of laughter around a room of those she loves. For right now, she think that it's enough. She can listen closely to the symphony within her, or she can focus on the strings that hold her shoulders tightly, if that's what she wants. Or she can let go, throw her hands up and laugh and forget everything that ever held her down.

But most of the time, she sits and she listens for something else. In those moments, she lets the slow, steady ticking of the clock wash over her, to allow her fingers to go numb with remembrance of the things she lost, the things she will continue to lose. The clock is a reassurance, an anchor, a big thing that shouts of insignificance and of loss and of love. Mostly, though, it's a greeting—and it's a good-bye.

After all, the end always brings about a new beginning.

And somewhere in the world, the sun is rising, and Hermione can see her path clearly.

This, she thinks, is just the beginning.