AN: Hello, all! I think this might be my second-longest chapter and I'm really proud of it. The first part was honestly pretty hard for me to write because I pulled a lot from my own experiences so it might be emotional and sad and angsty. After I finished it I was a bit emotionally drained, but I think that writing this story has been really helpful for me to express my struggles because I don't have a lot of people to talk to.

I did get a question in the last chapter. I had mentioned in the summer that Hermione had changed and said "who is she." I was asked that question and so my response is: For everyone, she was the smart girl, the muggle-born, Harry Potter's best friend, whichever one mattered the most for whoever was judging her. She never really wanted to be that kind of person who was defined by that, but that ended up being her mask. Right now there is more of her suffering with PTSD and depression, but once friendships really start to form and she lets herself take off that mask, she won't really know who she is without it. The 'who is she' question is more of Hermione's personal struggle that will be address in two or three more chapters.

This story is really approaching a part where I feel like everything I'm struggling with I'm putting in Hermione's character. But thank you all who have been favoriting, following, commenting/reviewing, giving kudos, etc. (depending whether you're on or ao3 since this story is on both), that really lifts up my mood when I see that. Even seeing how many people have read it is amazing for me. So thank you so much, everyone!

I honestly really like how I'm expressing all of this so when I finish this story I plan to start another one (I already have a lot of ideas) where it really goes a lot more in-depth.

U_U

~~AlicornEagle

Halloween was probably the single day she hated more than anything. The anniversary of the Final Battle would be second, and her birthday fell in third.

But Halloween was when everything changed for the worse. When her role became definite for a year again. Something always happened each Halloween, and she hated it. This year, she'd chosen to change, so she wouldn't have to deal with the problems as much. But there were still problems.

They tried to make Halloween normal. The Great Hall was full of decorations, each table laid with a banquet of sweets. The Slytherins had hidden themselves somewhere, to do a Samhain ritual along with some other students from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Tracey had accidentally let slip their plans. Hermione had no plans to join. Halloween already haunted her enough, she didn't need Samhain to do the same.

Her guilt was enough to force her to walk away.

For most of the morning, she stayed in her bed. Not sleeping, but hurting. Causing hurt, her wand plenty to provide the burn and the sting that she needed to steady herself. She skipped the meals, instead choosing to walk up the staircases to the Room of Requirement. She hadn't been there in a while.

She paced three times in front of the wall opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls ballet. Even after she finished walking, no door appeared. Of course. Of course.

If she didn't even know what she needed, how would the Room?

What did she need? Somewhere to hide where her guilt wouldn't find her? Somewhere that wouldn't remind her of everything that haunted her? An escape, a break? She laughed humorlessly and sank to the floor. She didn't know who she was, she didn't know what she wanted or needed, she just wanted it all to go away.

And then the door appeared,

She was tempted to tell it to go fuck itself, but wondered what it would come up with. Slowly, she got up and opened the door.

She couldn't breathe. She should've told the door to fuck itself and left, found somewhere else to pity herself. This — she couldn't handle this. It was too much.

A tear slipped down her cheek.

This didn't help her run from everything, this pushed her right into it. Everything, all the memories, somehow encompassed right there. Right there, in her childhood bedroom.

She couldn't restore her parents' memories. She erased their memories right before she left to escort Harry from Privet Drive, and Mad-Eye died. George lost an ear, and later, his twin. He was never the same. Snape cursed him, and then died a hero, one that Harry had begged her to save, but she couldn't. She couldn't save him. She couldn't save any of them. Not Lavender, who she had roomed with for seven fucking years. Not Crabbe, who all the Slytherins mourned. Not Remus and Tonks, who she was so close to, who had saved her when she was trying to be someone she wasn't, who saw through her attempts. They both knew masks well, one constantly changing faces and the other hiding the monster inside. She couldn't save any of them. And she couldn't even save herself.

She couldn't look at the bedroom. The picture of all her friends and family on her nightstand. Half of them were gone. The entire room screamed innocence that was gone, gone for her. And then she abandoned them. Left the Gryffindors, hung with the Slytherins, because she was a monster. A monster without redemption, no matter what anyone said.

She couldn't even see with all the tears blurring her vision. All of them from the past two years where everything just got worse and worse and she couldn't feel or think or be anything worth saving and then she couldn't even save the people who were truly worth saving. Dobby, who saved them all, and she couldn't return the favor. Cedric and Sirius… maybe if she'd seen the truth amidst the lies they wouldn't've had to die, she could've saved them and Harry's conscience. Dumbledore, if she'd realized that Draco — that Malfoy was a Death Eater — he could've saved them when she couldn't.

But they were all gone. And she couldn't bring them back. She wished she could, to atone for her sins. To save her from the guilt that formed the flames of her personal, lonely hell. The astronomy tower was seeming quite nice right now.

And then it changed. It wasn't her bedroom anymore, but the astronomy tower at night. With the moon and the stars shining above, but it didn't seem peaceful. Instead it seemed deceitful. Lies, lies, lies… how many had she told? How many had she waved off? How many had she not realized that could've saved so many people. She walked toward the edge of that window, and tumbled over the edge, feeling the wind rush in her ears and the fake sky the only thing in her vision. And then she landed on her bed. Of course. Of course she couldn't even die. She didn't want to die, she didn't deserve to die. She didn't deserve that relief from all her sins and lies and everything she did wrong. She hated failure. But she'd failed so much. She failed everyone and everything, and now she's failed herself.

She laughed, but it was more of crying at the irony of it all. She wanted to save everyone, but she didn't want to save herself. Whatever it meant to save. Maybe to save herself meant to let herself die. And then she'd be saving everyone else by being gone.

Her fingernails dug into her skin, her MUDBLOOD scar bleeding and red scratches adding to it all. Red, red, red. She'd left the red behind for the green. She chose it. And she deserved to suffer. She started pulling at her hair, the blood seeping into it. She needed the pain, she needed something, she needed anything. She muffled a scream. It was all too much, too much for her to handle, but maybe that was her punishment, her suffering, because she deserved to suffer. She deserved everything that was thrown at her. She didn't deserve reprieve or relief. And no one was coming to save her, no one should come to save her, she didn't want them to or need them to or deserve them to.

She broke down in a fake mirror of her childhood bedroom. It tormented her, pretended to give her relief and then eradicated the hope completely, and somehow she found herself smiling. She didn't know why. It didn't even feel like a smile, and there was no accompanying happiness.

But she was smiling. She hadn't smiled in a while. To be fair, she hadn't cried in a while, either. Everything today conflicted with each other, somehow accepting while also in denial. And she broke down. She knew she was a mess if she was crying, even more if she was smiling. She was tired, her eyes hurt from all the tears, her throat was dry but there was no water, her limbs weren't moving, her arm was covered in dried blood and angry red scratches, and she had fallen back and was lying down on the bed, one hand holding the other wrist, one ankle crossed over the other. What had just happened? She broke down at something, at nothing. No wonder she couldn't save anyone. She was so weak.

The tears didn't stop falling, and the smile never disappeared. What had she become?

For the first time ever, Hermione Granger found that she couldn't answer a question. What had she become, indeed.

—||—||—||—||—||—||—||—||—||—

She had ended up crying herself to sleep in that bed she hadn't seen for more than a year. No one came to find her, or at least if they did, they didn't find her.

She woke up gasping, more tears pouring from her eyes. Once they'd started, it was as if they couldn't stop. Her nightmares had returned, and she was grateful. That was something, at least.

Hermione couldn't let herself look like such a mess when she left the Room of Requirement. A door immediately appeared, and recognized it to lead to her bathroom. What used to be her bathroom.

She took off her clothes before turning the knobs of the shower and let the too-hot water fall over her, acting more like needles than soothing. It irritated her scars, but it didn't bother. She relished it.

She washed off the dried blood from her arm and hair before signing and leaning against the wall. After her entire mental breakdown earlier, she didn't have the energy for much else. She didn't have the energy to deal with everyone's Halloween or Samhain shit. After the nightmare, this time a rather vivid and long one, she wouldn't be able to sleep, either. The Room hadn't done much more than torment her, so she wouldn't even attempt to rely on it to give her something to do. Nothing was fun, anyway, or at least interesting enough to mildly entertain her.

After she dried herself and dressed, she checked the time. It was about fifteen minutes until the feast. According to Tracey, they would do the Samhain Ritual earlier so they could still make it to the feast in the evening. They had to be done by now, and knowing Pansy, the zealous girl would try to drag her to the feast like she did Hogsmeade. Her best interest was to stay here, where no one would find her. But perhaps she could find somewhere that they wouldn't look if they were truly desperate. At least she'd stay out of the common room and the library.

She was glad to leave the Room of Requirement, and quickly glanced around instinctively before deciding to wander down a corridor she usually didn't go down. If there was anything dangerous there, then better for her. She had no sense of self-preservation anymore.

As she started to walk, she stopped caring about where she was going and meandered aimlessly through the corridors of Hogwarts. She hasn't been in this part of it, as most classes (with the exception of divination, astronomy, and herbology) were on the lower few floors. She wondered sometimes why there were so many empty classrooms around the school. It was as if they were asking for the students to play out all of their not-so-innocent fantasies.

Contrary to what she knew most believed, she wasn't some sort of prude virgin. Her first time was with a muggle boy in her neighborhood at the end of the summer before sixth year. She also had sex with Cormac McLaggen once during that year and a few times with Ron before they'd gone on the run, and while neither of them were very good (especially in comparison to the muggle boy, Nathaniel), they counted. She hadn't had sex in over a year, though, and good sex in about two. It was almost sad.

But with all her inner turmoil she wasn't exactly looking to get laid.

She laughed quietly to herself at that thought and turned a corner, to find herself face-to-face with a set of rather ornate and grand double doors. Shrugging caution aside, she pushed them open and audibly gasped.

It was… a ballroom. The floor was white marble with light gold veins and the walls were a smooth cream color. Several elegant gold chandeliers hung from the white ceiling, accompanied by matching candelabras attached to the wall. Around three walls were small tables with a white tablecloth and chairs with white chair covers tied with a gold ribbon. Against the last wall, directly across from the doors, was a raised platform, with nothing on it except a piano tucked in the corner.

As if in a trance, she walked toward the small set of stairs on the right side of the platform, walking up them and across the platform to the piano, hesitantly sitting down on the bench. She took off the cover on the keys of the piano and slowly put her fingers on the keys, but didn't press them.

Sucking in a breath, she began to go through a warmup that her instructor had always recommended. After that, she pulled a rather emotional song from the back of her memory and began to play it. The notes echoed in the empty ballroom, resonating around her heart. She bit her lip and a tear escaped at the song and how much it panged within her person. She had never felt so… connected… when playing a song on the piano. It seemed to wake something inside her that she couldn't recognize.

And then all too soon it was over and she was panting from it, from how much the song affected her.

"Well, well. I didn't know you could play, Hermione. It's a welcomed surprise."

She turned in shock to the door, where a certain blonde-haired boy was standing.

"M-Malfoy, what are you doing here?"

"Back to Malfoy, are we, Granger?"

"Nevermind that, what are you doing here?"

"I wandered around, I heard music, I investigated. It's very straightforward."

She narrowed her eyes at him before turning back to the piano.

"It was a beautiful piece, you know," he called. "Mind if I have a turn?"

"You play piano?"

"Of course," he replied smoothly, walking over to the platform and up the stairs. "Move over."

She obliged and he sat down next to her. His fingers hovered over the keys before they began playing a slower piece than hers, and it was slightly shorter, but still so beautiful.

"Draco… was that Erik Satie's Gymnopédie? Isn't Erik Satie muggle?"

"When it comes to art, I find that muggles are much more talented than their wizard counterparts. Visual arts, music, drama, literature… and Satie's French. Us Malfoy's keep up with the comings and goings of France."

"Well that was absolutely beautiful. My turn?"

He nodded, and she gave him a small smile as she looked at the piano.