After Voldemort fell, Hermione became the last living witch who knew the complete ritual for making a Horcrux. It barely crossed anybody's mind as they buried the dead, rounded up the remaining death eaters, and made peace with themselves. This little fact didn't leave a scratch on their pristine post-war lives. Even after war with the nonmagical broke out, after Hogwarts burned down and they were forced into relocation camps and then into hiding, not even the darkest wizards among their ranks suggested making Horcruxes.
Over time, Harry forgot how to properly cry whenever he lost someone. The magic he channeled became vile and filled with hatred. Every night his fingers itched, imagining they held the Resurrection Stone between them, and Harry regretted leaving it behind in the Forbidden Forest. Even then, he never considered the option of Horcruxes. They had all seen what happened to Voldemort, after all.
So when Hermione handed him all the information on the ritual, he knew the end was nigh.
He looked at the outstretched hand and the brown covered notebook.
"What's this?" He asked.
"The pages on Horcruxes from Magick Most Evile, as much as I could remember." Hermione whispered. Her throat was destroyed back when Muggles flushed the tunnels and sewers with poisonous gas "I looked into redacted versions and variants, and added in the details."
Harry didn't move to take it. He looked around the room, and found most of his good fighters within earshot. It was as if they anticipated a confrontation.
"Why are you giving me this?"
Hermione didn't even flinch. "I got word from the French resistance. Their contact in the government gave the green light. We move now."
"I thought we agreed it's a suicide mission." Harry hissed.
"Time's changed, Harry. If we don't do something soon we'll all slowly die out here."
"We'll find some other way."
"What other way?" She questioned, and Harry knew her mind was made and beyond his reach "This might be the last chance we got."
Harry couldn't deny that. Their numbers had dwindled past a certain point. The pained groans of the wounded echoed in the otherwise silent cave they dug inside an abandoned coal mine and called shelter.
"If we can't breach them back when we put up a good fight, what makes you think we can now?"
"Their contact in the government will make an opening for us to disable the magical security system for a while. We get in, plant the bugs in the heads of a few muggles, and get out. We'll plant the idea in their subconscious that the war against magic needs to be stopped. I ran all the tests the muggles developed so far, and none of them was able to detect the bugs. Most importantly, it will make them believe that it's their own idea."
"Don't tell me this plan doesn't sound flimsy to you. What if something goes wrong?"
"If they learned what we had done, those politicians will try to find the bugs and start pointing fingers at each other" Hermione answered, circumventing the most glaring question here "Pray to Merlin that their grip around our throats will loosen, and give us the breathing room we need."
Harry heard the phantom tumbling of chips. Pinned up against the corner, Hermione's going all-in in a wild gamble. It went unsaid that if anything went wrong, some of them will be martyred on the spot, but ones captured alive won't be as lucky.
"You're betting all our lives on a Squib you never met. For all you know, this so called contact might be working for the Muggles all along and you're walking right into their trap."
"We have no choice." Hermione answered for everyone.
Harry looked around. The unknown danger hung over everyone's head like a cleaver. All around them, their fighters lowered their heads and bared their necks. He could go on and on about the loopholes of this reckless mission, but it wouldn't have made any difference.
Harry sighed "I'm coming with you."
"You should stay here and heal .."
"Bullshit" Harry cut her off bitterly. He dropped his glamor and showed the jagged blackened hole where the left side of his face used to be "I'm as healed as I'll ever be."
Hermione looked away subtly and bit her lips.
"You need to stay where our people are." Draco spoke in her stead "They cannot lose you."
Harry dug his nails into the wood of the already scarred Holly wand, a habit he developed nowadays to quell forceful bursts of magic. He shot a glare at the pale-faced man, arguments ready to fire on the tip of his tongue, but found himself staring into a look of emptiness. Here were the looks of a man who wanted it all to be over. Harry desperately searched the faces of the others, looking for the faintest sparkle of hope or attachment. But he saw them for what they were, soldiers too broken and exhausted to be bothered with casting a cleaning charm on themselves.
Harry could not bear to see that same look on the face of every wizard and witch he would leave behind, the children and the wounded. For some twisted reason, he was their last hope.
Hermione gently reached up and wrapped her arms around him. Her thin arms were as heavy as the chains binding him to this rat hole that was their shelter. When she pulled away, Harry feared that she was saying goodbye.
"Protect yourself" Without even realizing, Harry had grabbed on to her wrist hard enough to leave bruises "I can't lose you."
Harry wasn't sure if she understood what she meant to him, or what losing her would do to him.
"I will look after myself." Hermione answered softly. Her words gave Harry courage to steal a look into her eyes, and the sight of them struck like a hammer to his chest. They were just as empty. They may blink and move but were otherwise the same as the eyes of a corpse, resigned to a fate of becoming food for worms.
Harry grabbed the notebook, still floating where she left it, and held it to her open-palmed like offering sacrifice to a goddess.
"It's a suicide mission." He pleaded "Don't die on me, Hermione, please."
Silence hung between the dirt walls of the abandoned mine. Harry couldn't give voice to what he expected of her. The words were stuck like molasses to his throat.
A pained look crossed Hermione's face. "I won't do it."
"Please, give it some thought…"
"What's the point, Harry? So I can lead some inhuman existence, keep hiding and running and killing muggles just to survive?" She raised her voice and it cracked "It's not fair that you ask me to mutilate my soul for you."
Harry's hands hung in the air where she refused to take the book. The next second he threw it at her face, fragile pages tearing and settling at her feet. "Is it fair for me then?" Harry heard a furious roar from himself "You get to die fighting, and leave me cursed with this? Why did you give me this book, Hermione?"
Her frail frame shuddered.
"Answer me!"
The fear etched across Hermione's face stabbed him where it hurt the most, and he immediately deflated. He reined in all that magic sizzling around him, bottled it up and buried it deeper inside.
Hermione let out a shaky breath. "It's not fair. None of it is."
Without bothering to pick up the pages, she turned to leave.
"Do you still blame me for what happened to Ron?"
The words left his mouth before he could register it. Harry wished he could swallow his own tongue and die, or this coal mine would collapse upon him before he had a chance to hear her response.
When Hermione turned to look at him, there wasn't any sign of hatred or grief he expected to find. There was only the same emptiness.
"I can't offer the forgiveness you seek, Harry, when I don't know where to look for it myself."
Those were the last words she ever said to him. Two weeks later, the muggles live streamed putting a bullet through her head on every available channel. Later on the same day, through an old rebel wizard's communications line the muggles cracked, they sent him footage of them sawing the head off her corpse, demanding his unconditional surrender, etcetera etcetera.
When Harry staggered out of the dead doctor's house a newly made immortal, naturally he thought about Hermione. He tried to remember the way she laughed when they won a Quidditch game, or frowned when she didn't know the answer to a question, and how she used to get upset by the smallest things like something silly Ron said. Harry had a hard time. His memories were addled by the burning pain in his soul. If it all went according to plan, he would see Hogwarts and his friends again soon. The thought of that felt too surreal, so Harry didn't dwell on it.
The street outside was blanketed in a warm orange glow from the lights of the residences. A gigantic hairy spider, stitched together by different types of cloth, crouched in the doctor's front yard. Not so far away Harry "saw" small groups of children heading home with baskets full of sweets and heard their giggly screams.
Not trusting himself to Apparate, Harry walked along the road and looked for an obscure alley or corner to summon the Knight Bus. It wasn't his favorite mode of transport, but it will get him where he needed fast with the help of a little Confundus, since he didn't have any wizarding money on him.
Not long after Harry was a safe distance away, a string of smoke seeped through sealed windows. With a loud bang that seemed to shake the very ground beneath, the house with the giant spider blew up in flames.
The bright glow of flames lit up the shocked, young faces of a group of muggles before him. A girl no older than sixteen appeared to be chaperoning this group of kids. Standing there with her mouth hung open, she seemed to have completely forgotten her duty to console the frightened kids. The next second, she lurched towards the burning house.
"Mom!" Harry heard her scream as she raced past him "Dad!"
Harry turned abruptly and watched her. The girl became smaller and smaller in his vision as she got further and further away until she reached the burning house.
"Get away from the house Elena!" Some muggles screamed at her.
Harry could feel the flames pulsing throughout the house, ravenous for wood and flesh. It had the signature of his own magic all over it. The girl tried to open the door but yelped when the handle burnt her hand like hot iron. The next second, another wave of explosion shattered the wooden shell of the house and swallowed her up instantly.
Harry seemed frozen in place, until the cries of the children startled him awake. The group of kids who just witnessed their chaperon burnt to a crisp scurried and squeaked like a group of rats, precious candies left trodden on the ground as they ran away.
A chubby boy must have tripped and fell. He sat howling cradling a bloody knee, but couldn't manage to get up by himself with the ridiculous chocolate donut costume around him. Harry picked up his pumpkin shaped bowl of candies, shoved it into his hands, and helped him up.
"Go home to your parents." Harry told him. The boy nodded forcefully and ran away as fast as a donut could.
Distant sirens signaled the fire brigade's approach. When the boy got home, he watched the firefighters put out the fire through the window, as he lied safely in his parents' arms. The following morning, he counted the candies in his pumpkin basket and found a shiny 20 pence among them. Not giving it a second thought, he stored it away in the piggy bank. When the piggy got full he could get more of his favorite candies.
A person's immune system can eliminate an infection in three days. Harry doubted his body could last that long in this unwelcoming universe. His magic kept faltering and his "vision" blurred. Fortunately he knew his way around Knockturn Alley well. Its residents experienced with a life in hiding, this place lasted much longer than Diagonal after muggles declared basically every potion ingredient and magical artifact contraband. For a short while, Knockturn became the artery that kept magical communities afloat. But right now it's still a dingy alley that smelled of garbage.
Harry slid inside the old Borgin and Burkes. The walls were lined with cursed trinkets with the occasional powerful artefact. On a cushioned podium, a ram's skull burned with artful blue flames.
"Ah, care for a little decoration for Samhain?" The stout man behind the counter caught him looking and said "It keeps evil spirits away while the fire is burning. Great taste, I must say. It's also on sale."
"Before you make more sales pitch and make my ears bleed, Borgin" Harry said "I'm here for the vanishing cabinet."
"Of course, of course." Borgin rubbed his hands and tried to furtively peek at Harry's face under his hood "I have just the one at a very reasonable price."
"It has a twin currently inside Hogwarts, and it's broken. I need you to tell me how to fix it and help me transport a few items."
"Am I glad that you already seem so well informed of the product. Have I had the pleasure of doing business with you before, mister..?"
"Potter."
"Mister Potter, I'm afraid we are an antique shop and we don't participate in the operation of the products once they are off our hands. But I'll gladly sell you the cabinet, with everything you need to fix its twin, in a sweet package deal. Would you like to examine the cabinet.."
"I don't have any gold." Harry confessed.
Borgin's cloyingly sweet smile was dropped in a heartbeat and replaced by a foul look "The door's that way, then. Come back when you intend to do business."
"I would offer to pay you back later, but I guess you wouldn't take that " Harry said in good humor.
Borgin leered at him "You stink so much of death, Mister whatever your name is. I don't think you'll live to pay me back. Bugger off and die somewhere far away from my shop or I'll sell your parts as potion ingre…"
The oily faced man made a gurgling sound like he was punched in the lungs. The sudden burst of magic that hit him seemed to make the air too thin to breathe and gravity tenfold stronger. Borgin reached for the table and supported himself on wobbly knees.
"Try anything to hurt me in my shop" Borgin bit out "you won't dream of stepping out of here alive."
Harry swallowed the rush of blood to his throat from using his withering magic. He took a moment to scan the seemingly disorderly shelves, no doubt laid with wards and contraptions, ready to terminate any robber at a flick of Borgin's finger.
"But Voldemort killed Caractacus Burke in this very shop, didn't he? Because Burke was too gossipy" Harry asked casually "Are you a gossip, Mr. Borgin?"
"H, how.." Borgin's face turned sickly pale. The shock quickly soured into anger, however, as Borgin wiped off the sweat on his forehead and glared at Harry "I don't care how you know, but you don't scare me! Huh! If any death eater scum on the run thinks they can shake me down, this shop wouldn't still be standing today."
The suffocating weight of magic in the air was suddenly gone. Harry bent over and laughed. He laughed so hard that he actually coughed up blood this time, almost spraying Borgin in the face.
"Oh excuse me" Harry wiped his lips with his sleeve "But a death eater? I couldn't help myself."
Borgin muttered something foul, no doubt believing he was mad. Before he got kicked out or worse, Harry strolled over to a corner next to the counter and kicked at the wall where the plaster peeled off, revealing a small hidden compartment.
To Borgin's utter shock, Harry rummaged through his secret stash of fine wines and took out a bottle.
"Rest assured, I have no intention of robbing you" Harry said as he conjured two glasses and placed them on the counter "I ask for the cabinet and your dedicated help, and in return I give the most valuable information in this world -"
Harry filled their cups "Knowledge of the future."
Borgin huffed but kept listening, as if appraising a suspicious antique.
"Oh and" Harry swept his robe to the side, revealing burnt flesh and a gaping hole in his chest. He reached a finger inside the chamber of his heart, and fished out what looked like a shriveled piece of black fabric "The skin shed by a little World Serpent."
Borgin almost jumped on his toes. He studied Harry's face with eyes wide as saucers, with a mixture of greed and admiration. He tapped the ashtray on the counter. The front door locked itself and the sign flipped to "CLOSED".
"Who are you, really?"
"My name is Harry Potter. I don't take you for a gossip, Mr. Borgin?"