The funeral came on with a mob of important witches and wizards taking rooms at Hogwarts. The Minister for Magic was in the building, as was Madame Maxime from Beauxbaton's Academy and a handful of other Ministry officials.

It didn't take much persuasion to get Harry to avoid the lot of them. He didn't want much to do with anybody, actually. He had pulled his friends around him like a cloak, spending all his time with her, Ginny and Ron. The weather was wonderful. They went for a lot of walks, finding a nice little clearing just off the path around the lake where they could sit out of sight of the castle.

They visited the hospital wing twice a day. Neville had been discharged but Bill was still there. Poppy glared at Hermione whenever they visited, insisting she pull up her shirt so that Poppy could look over the still mending flesh across her ribs. It was mottled and red, but the blisters were gone, as were the red streaks where her skin had been torn open by whatever curse she'd been hit with. The others would chat to Bill while Poppy smeared the orange Burn Paste across the affected area.

Ron was trying to be tough. Harry wouldn't look at her straight—Ron had left out the bits about Horcruxes when he told her story, and that meant Harry couldn't properly understand why she'd chosen to tell Ron but not him.

"Anybody we know died?" Ron asked her, forcing brashness into his tone that made her wince.

"No," she said, folding away the Evening Prophet. "They're still looking for Snape but no sign…"

"Of course there isn't," said Harry, who became angry every time the subject came up. She had been trying very hard not to bring it up, to keep him even-headed. She'd taken to manufacturing excuses to leave him and Ginny alone. "They won't find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they've never managed to do that in all this time…"

Hermione looked away. Harry looked at her when he talked about "they." She wasn't sure if he meant the Order or the Ministry or both, but she had obviously taken on a liaison position in his mind, the stand-in for "them."

"I'm going to bed," Ginny said, breaking the tension a bit with a yawn. "I haven't been sleeping that well since… well… I could do with some sleep."

She kissed Harry—Ron looked away—and waved at Ron and Hermione. Hermione smiled back. When she was gone, Hermione leaned forward and lowered her voice.

"Harry, I found something out this morning."

"What? R.A.B.?" said Harry, sitting up straight.

"No, nothing on that." He looked disappointed. "There are a couple of reasonably well-known wizards with those initials—Rosalind Antigone Bungs… Rupert 'Axebanger' Brookstanton—but they don't seem to fit at all. Judging by the note, the person who stole the Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can't find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him… No, actually, it's about… well, Snape."

"What about him?" Harry slumped back in his chair.

Hermione pressed on. She wanted to tell him about the potions book. She'd decided it the night before. She'd taken to sleeping down in the common room, the better to catch Harry if he decided to go running off, and she'd been staring at the portrait of the girl in the daisy crown.

"Well, it's just that Eileen Prince did once own the book. You see… she was Snape's mother."

"I thought she wasn't much of a looker," Ron said. Hermione ignored him.

"There was an old Prophet announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she'd given birth to a—"

"—murderer," spat Harry.

"Well… yes," Hermione said, wishing she'd never brought it up. She'd had a half-baked plan to try to tell Harry a little bit about Severus's childhood, about how his parents had been as awful as Harry's aunt and uncle. Worse in a lot of ways, actually. She had this idea in her head that, after the war, she'd want them to have common ground. She'd want them to get along, if at all possible. This was a mistake. I shouldn't've said anything. "Snape must have been proud of being 'half a Prince,' you see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the Prophet."

"Yeah, that fits," Harry said. "He'd play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them…"

Hermione swallowed. He wasn't far off the mark at all, there.

"He's just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father… ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name—Lord Voldemort—the Half-Blood Prince—how could Dumbledore have missed—?"

Hermione bit her lip as Harry cut himself off.

"I still don't get why he didn't turn you in for using that book," said Ron. "He must've known where you were getting it all from."

They both glanced at Hermione, but she ignored the looks.

"He knew," said Harry bitterly at last. "He knew when I used Sectumsempra. He didn't really need Legilimency… He might even have known before then, with Slughorn talking about how brilliant I was at Potions… Shouldn't have left his old book in the bottom of that cupboard, should he?"

"But why didn't he turn you in?"

"I don't think he wanted to associate himself with that book," Hermione said. Or rather, he was too busy trying to keep the world spinning and hoped I'd be able to keep you in line. "I don't think Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he'd known. And even if Snape pretended it hadn't been his, Slughorn would have recognized his writing at once. Anyway, the book was left in Snape's old classroom, and I'll bet Dumbledore knew his mother was called 'Prince.'"

"I should've shown the book to Dumbledore," said Harry, and it took all of Hermione's willpower not to roll her eyes. Now you get it. "All that time he was showing me how Voldemort was evil even when he was at school, and I had proof Snape was too—"

That's my husband you're talking about.

"'Evil' is a strong word," she said quietly.

"You were the one who kept telling me the book was dangerous!"

"I'm trying to say, Harry, that you're putting too much blame on yourself. I thought the Prince seemed to have a nasty sense of humor, but I would never have guessed he was a potential killer…"

I'd never have guessed I'd be able to kill, either.

"None of us could've guessed Snape would… you know," said Ron almost diplomatically.

They fell silent. Hermione wanted to reach out and wrap the both of them in a hug, to squeeze them tight and tell them that it would all be okay. She was a very good liar, after all. They might believe her.

They went their separate ways not long after that. Harry and Ron up to bed—or to talk, whatever teenaged boys did the night before a funeral—and Hermione packed. Lavender was sitting on her bed, staring at Parvati's empty bed blankly. It occurred to Hermione that she should say something, that Lavender's best friend had been yanked out of school and now she was probably feeling alone and scared. The years of teasing and harassment didn't weigh so heavily on her, no matter how obnoxious the girl had been to live with since New Years.

"Hey," Hermione said neutrally, crossing to her bed and beginning to sort through her things. She had her books and the important things in her satchel already, but there were still knick-knacks, the detritus of living in the same space for the school year, to put away.

"Hey," Lavender said quietly, subdued. Hermione glanced over and saw that Lavender was looking at her, surprised. Hermione thought maybe she shouldn't have said anything.

"Heard from Parvati at all?" What the hell are we supposed to talk about?

"Yeah. She and Padma are at home. She's mad they won't let her come back for the funeral."

They were quiet for awhile. Hermione sorted away everything but her dress robes for the funeral in the morning, which she put on a hanger on the wall. They were simple robes, especially for dress robes; she'd bought them ages ago for funerals. The under dress was dark gray cotton with a high collar, draping prettily down to the floor. The jacket—overdress? She was never sure what the term was when it came to the layers of wizarding clothing—was black linen. There were no lapels, no embroidery or adornment. It had a short collar, sleeves close to her arms that buttoned up the forearm like Severus's frock coat, and ended at her ankles. The jacket was open in front, showing the underdress, and held in place by a decorative silver clasp at her waist.

"Those are nice," Lavender said.

"Thank you," Hermione said, then took herself off to the bathroom to shower before bed. The girl was asleep when she reentered the room.

\\

In the morning, they dressed without a word. Lavender gave her an odd look when she Shrunk her trunk and put it in the satchel, which she folded down to wallet size and stowed it away in a pocket, but she didn't say anything. Hermione wondered if they should hug or shake hands, but the day had started before she made up her mind.

Breakfast seemed very formal. Everybody was in their dress robes for the funeral, and the noise level never managed to rise above a mournful hum.

"It's nearly time," Minerva said at long last. "Please follow your Heads of Houses out into the grounds. Gryffindors, after me."

They filed out in near silence. Hermione had never seen the students so subdued, and that included the day of the memorial for Cedric Diggory.

Slughorn was leading the Slytherins, standing out like a sore thumb in his brilliantly green robes with silver embroidery. They were formal and resplendent, but they struck Hermione as out of place, as too ostentatious for a funeral. Of course, Dumbledore had been known to wear all sort of garish colors, often with silver moons and other clichés embroidered over them. Maybe the robes were an in-joke between the two of them.

The grounds were sunny and pleasant. Hermione was behind Harry and in front of Ron for the walk around the lake to the spot where the hundreds of chairs were set out in rows. There was an aisle down the center, and a marble table at the front. It was beautiful.

For the life of her, Hermione couldn't remember what she'd eaten for breakfast.

Hermione only recognized the well-known faces among the assembled mourners. There was an astounding assortment of people, really. Old, young, well dressed and not so well dressed. Tired. Varying states of distraught.

Most of the Order was present, though they weren't sitting together. Tonks's hair was bright pink. Bill had made it down from the hospital wing, and sat looking a little tired and very grim with Fleur by his side. The twins had matching dragonhide jackets in black. Madame Maxim was there, and, unfortunately, so was Rita Skeeter. She spotted Tom from the Leaky Cauldron, Aberforth from the Hog's Head, the hairy one from the Weird Sisters, Madam Malkin. Even the ghosts had left the castle, though it was hard to see them in the sunlight.

The students filed into seats on the lake side. Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione ended up on the outer row. Hermione could feel eyes on them. It made her skin crawl. She supposed that was what life was like for Harry Potter all the time. People watching, wondering, whispering.

The staff filed in last, taking seats in the front row, and then the merpeople made their appearance. Their music was strange, otherworldly, but beautiful. They were just below the surface of the lake, the water clear and a bit green in the sunlight. She didn't speak a lick of Mermish, so she had no idea what they were saying, but she got the idea of the song. Loss. Despair.

Then Hagrid walked slowly up the aisle between the chairs, crying silently, carrying the body of the headmaster wrapped in purple velvet with golden stars. It hurt to see it. Her eyes prickled dryly; she didn't seem to have any tears left even if she wanted them.

Hermione drew her Occlumency around her, feeling the cold shut out the pain, shut out the loss, shut out the feeling that she was spinning faster and faster out of control and away from the reasonable. She wished she really was an eighteen year old girl attending her headmaster's funeral and life was as simple as that.

Hagrid carried Dumbledore up to the front and lay him on the stone table, then stepped away. He walked back down the aisle, honking his nose in his hanky, headed for the back row and Grawp. When he was seated, the merpeople stopped their song, and a little tufty-haired man in plain black robes stood in front of the stone table. Hermione could only catch snatches of what the man said over the rustling of the crowd, with the light breeze working against her.

Hermione looked away from it, watching the merpeople rise above the surface of the lake, the centaurs gather at the edge of the forest. Next to her, Harry turned away as well. Hermione took his arm, linking their elbows as they sat next to each other. He startled, gave her a look, but then dismissed it.

At the front, the tufty-haired man reclaimed his seat. There was a long moment of silence. Then the flames rose up around Dumbledore's body. A few of the uninitiated screamed, and Harry twitched. She'd forgotten that he'd never been to a wizarding funeral; she probably should have warned him.

The flames rose higher and higher, obscuring Dumbledore's body. White smoke spiraled into the air, forming strange, beautiful shapes. Then the fire was gone and a tomb of white marble stood in its place.

A shower of arrows soared through the air, falling well short of the crowd (but a few people cried out anyway). Hermione looked over again, saw the centaurs disappearing back into the forest as the merpeople were sinking back into the depths of the lake.

Hermione lost it. She let go of Harry's arm in order to put her hands over her face, leaning forward so that her body was folded in half in her chair, head to knees.

Dumbledore was well and truly gone. Severus had been forced to do the deed, had been forced out of safety into the nest of the Death Eaters. It would only be a matter of weeks before the government was overrun, before nobody was safe. Their plans had incorporated Dumbledore's death—it had been inevitable after he'd been cursed—but they'd counted on more time. Now Harry would be at the Dursleys's, the students would be at their homes. Muggle-born first years would be left adrift, at best; at worst, they'd board the train for school and never be seen again.

And Severus would orchestrate the worst of it at the school. It would be a training ground for Death Eaters, for the new order. Exactly what he'd been trying to push his Slytherins away from for the past decade or so.

More than anything, she wished Severus had been able to come to the funeral. It was stupid. It had never been a possibility. It struck her as deeply unfair, and that thought almost made her laugh—when was anything actually fair? Nobody cared if Severus was more loyal to Dumbledore than anybody else in the world, certainly more loyal to the headmaster than she was. She had run, she had sidestepped him and avoided him for years when she thought he'd asked too much of her. Severus had had one or two rows with him, and then knuckled under and did what was required of him.

Hermione would have gotten up and left the school, Apparated away. She was wearing her Time Turner under her robes; she could go to Edinburgh and when Severus arrived back at the flat she'd take him away. They'd go back as far as they could stand, and then they'd live goddammit. And when they caught up to themselves, they'd go back again.

If Ron hadn't grabbed her, held her, she would have made a run for it. Instead, she just let him hang onto her. She cried into his shoulder, but his was the wrong shoulder. He was too tall, too young. He stroked her hair when he should have rubbed her back. But he couldn't know that—hell, she was glad he didn't know that.

Gasping for breath, Hermione finally pulled herself upright. She saw that Ron had been crying, too; there were tears dripping off the tip of his nose. He cried almost prettily, and she was jealous for a moment. She was always a red, splotchy mess when she got going.

She looked around for Harry but he'd gone. She had a moment of panic. She fully expected him to try and make a run for it. Not the way she wanted to make a run for it; the opposite, in fact. He'd try to slip away while they were distracted, try to take the world on by himself out of some stupid, misguided sense of honor. He'd try to protect them with distance, and he'd get himself killed.

"Gods, the wanker," she said, spotting Ginny a few paces on. She had a thoughtful look on her face that Hermione knew too well—she was settling in to wait for Harry Potter to come to his senses again. She was going to wait for him while he went off to vanquish the evil like a good little hero.

"W-what?" Ron asked, somewhere between scandalized and amused.

"Harry's going to try to run off by himself. I knew it," she growled. She wiped at her face, annoyed with the tears, and went up on her toes but she couldn't see over the crowd. "Can you see him?"

"He's fighting with the Minister again," Ron said, smiling now. He took her by the elbow and led her around the people until she could see them. Harry and Scrimgeor glared at each other. Harry said something with a final, set look on his face, and Scrimgeor turned and limped away.

"Hey, there's Percy the Ponce," Ron said, eyeing the Ministry delegation. "I'm gonna go hit him."

"Oh, no you don't," Hermione said, linking her arm in his and wrenching him around with her. He looked surprised that she was able to do it. She hoped he'd never find out about the Muggle Fights. "You're going to come with me and make Harry smile and remember that he needs us."

"Does he need us?" Ron asked, falling into step with her. She breathed a little easier when she saw Harry had spotted them and was walking slower, letting them catch up. The last thing she wanted was to sprint across the grounds in some mad dash to grab him before he could Apparate away.

"Yes, Ron, he does," she said. "Think about it. First year, I had to remember about the Devil's Snare, you had to play a great game of chess. If Harry hadn't had us with him, both of those would have killed him. Second year, I figured out the bit with the pipes and you went with him into the Chamber. Third year, you were mostly useless with your leg and I was mostly useless because I hate flying. Fourth year, I spent way too many hours drilling those spells into his head, and you kept him from going mad once you were done driving him mad. Fifth year—"

"—Yeah, I get it," he interrupted, and she smiled at him. She almost went on her toes and kissed his cheek, but he'd take that the wrong way. He was seventeen years old.

"What did Scrimgeor want?" she asked when they reached Harry.

"Same as he wanted at Christmas." He shrugged. "Wanted me to give him the inside information on Dumbledore and be the Ministry's new poster boy."

"Look, let me go back and hit Percy!" Ron said, trying to free his arm from hers.

"No," she said firmly, holding him solidly in place.

"It'll make me feel better!"

Harry laughed. Hermione smiled, but it faded fast when she looked past Harry and got the full view of the castle. It was beautiful. The sight of it reminded her that it might not open at all next year, according to Minerva. That was the big debate with the governors at the moment, especially as the number of students pulled out by their parents continued to climb.

"How can Hogwarts close?" She wasn't sure if she was asking them, or if she was just being sad.

"Maybe it won't," said Ron. She realized she was still holding his arm and let him go. "We're not in any more danger here than we are at home, are we? Everywhere's the same now. I'd even say Hogwarts is safer, there are more wizards inside to defend the place. What d'you reckon, Harry?"

"I'm not coming back even if it does reopen," said Harry.

Ron looked like he might fall over, but Hermione had half expected the answer. "I knew you were going to say that," she said. "But then what will you do?"

"I'm going back to the Dursleys' once more, because Dumbledore wanted me to. But it'll be a short visit, and then I'll be gone for good."

And thank Merlin for that, Hermione thought.

"But where will you go if you don't come back to school?" What did Dumbledore tell you? What do you know? Is there a plan? He never gave me a plan. I really hope he gave you a plan.

"I thought I might go back to Godric's Hollow," Harry said. "For me, it started there, all of it. I've just got a feeling I need to go there. And I can visit my parents' graves, I'd like that."

"And then what?" Ron asked.

"Then I've got to track down the rest of the Horcruxes, haven't I?" said Harry. He wasn't looking at them anymore, he was looking back at the tomb. "That's what he wanted me to do, that's why he told me all about them. If Dumbledore was right—and I'm sure he was—there are still four of them out there." Five, Hermione's mind corrected, and she almost started crying again. "I've got to find them and destroy them, and then I've got to go after the seventh bit of Voldemort's soul, the bit that's still in his body, and I'm the one who's going to kill him. And if I meet Severus Snape along the way, so much the better for me, so much the worse for him."

Hermione scrubbed angrily at her eyes, dashing away the moisture that had begun to gather in her eyelashes. She was sick to death of crying.

They paused for a long moment, watching the last of the crowd dispersing. The wide berth they were giving Grawp was almost comical, though she didn't blame them in the least. Hagrid was clinging to his half-brother, howling with grief.

"We'll be there, Harry," Ron said.

"What?"

"At your aunt and uncle's house," said Ron. "And then we'll go with you wherever you're going."

"No—" Harry said quickly, panic flitting across his face.

"You said to us once before," Hermione said quietly, "that there was a time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?"

"We're with you whatever happens," Ron said. "But mate, you're going to have to come round my mum and dad's house before we do anything else, even Godric's Hollow."

"Why?"

Hermione almost sagged with relief. He was asking why, not fighting them on it.

"Bill and Fleur's wedding, remember?"

"Yeah, we shouldn't miss that," Harry said after a sort of numb pause. Hermione almost smiled.