The Men and Women Who Won the War

by NoSecretsHere

It comes as a shock to even herself when Hermione Granger picks up her quill and writes the Tell-All book about the most recent Wizarding War. Told through multiple interviews with various people about their various roles in the War, she highlights exactly what war does to people on every side of the story. (Very slight, barely there Dramione)

Author's Note:

This is one of the stories I wrote years ago (2014 to be exact) that I always really loved the idea of and would often go back to read. The concept is one I still hold dear to my heart, and I knew it would be one of the first ones that I would edit and re-do in this project I am taking on this month.

I hope that whatever loses or pain you've experienced since the first time you read Deathly Hallows or saw it or even read my original story 7 years ago has healed even somewhat. May you find your home here.

Sincerely,

Nosecretshere

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No one expected her to do it. She never expected to do it. Out of all the people in Wizarding Britain, she was certainly one of the last ones expected to go ahead and do a Tell-All Book about the war. Before the blood had even dried on those Hogwart's stones, Rita Skeeter had certainly been plotting out what would be her own sordid version of what had happened during those lost years and especially final months.

Hermione Granger ends up proving them all wrong.

It started off as a random thought really, very nearly a small joke to laugh off at first. Harry and her had been flipping through the paper, staring at the fame hungry names of the Daily Prophet reporters wondering who exactly who end up coming out with the most sensationalized version of the tragedy that they had all lived through. It was bitter and maudlin to be talking about, but admist their annoyance and snark they seemed to come across a mutual thought.

'Why didn't someone who actually lived through this war write about it?'

Thousands of wizards spread out throughout Wizarding Britain and a war came down to a couple of hundred fighters at most on the Hogwarts' grounds, a majority of with made of up of barely legal children and younger.

Why should those that sat safely in their homes and offices be the ones to tell the tale of the tortured, starved, and dearly departed?

While the two best friends agree that it is best for one of them to write about the harrowing experiences that they shared, they come at a disagreement over who exactly will do it. Their trio for better or worse held the most information about how the war was actually won, so it would make sense for one of them to take the task on.

Harry outright refuses to do it. The Boy Who Lived is no Lockeheart and refuses to put his name to anything that will only lead to more photographers outside his home and mail stacking up on his doorstep. He's lived his whole life in the spotlight and is now more than ready to take a step back into the same shadows one would find under a cupboard under the stairs except this time with less spiders and more pleasant family.

Ron would never even consider it they both know, there is no point in ever really bringing it up to him when he returns from the Joke Shop later that evening to have dinner.

That left the job to her. Which most people probably would have agreed was for the best. Not in Auror training or partnering in the Joke Shop with a full Hogwarts education now under her belt, she has nothing to do but to write until she decides what she wants to do.

Nights at the Burrow full of screaming and days of hiding out in Grimmauld Place when the over-stimulation of the Burrow gets to her could use the distraction of a large scale task that she knows will keep her busy for over the next year at the very least.

Hermione Granger announces her book before she even really starts it. Harry had encouraged her to announce it before any others had made grand announcements about their own plans for tell-all novels. Even without a publisher in place, she sends a missive to the very papers she intends to curtail. The next day's headline screaming that the War Heroine is writing the war history everyone is waiting for and is 'shopping around' for a publisher.

The announcement works even better than they anticipated. Not only are a few of the lower level dregs of ladder chasers's first to throw away their own outlines for war novels because who could compete with the credibility of the most famous witch in all of wizarding Britain after all, it leads multiple million dollar offers ending up on the Burrow's dinner table just waiting for Hermione to take her pick.

Once the announcement's reaction has calmed down and her name scribbled onto a contract for an obscene amount of money that is less important to her than the freedom and lack of restriction the publisher promises on the final product, Hermione sits down and tries to attempt to write.

Lengthy pretty prose, succinct sentences, grueling descriptions of splinching and gore. It all flows from her quill but all end up in the rubbish pen before becoming even fully fledged works of writing.

There is something wrong, something she can't quite put words into until nearly the tenth attempt at a draft finds itself staring back at her from the top of an overflowing bin.

Who is she?

War heroine, Brightest Witch of Her Age, 'most famous witch in Britain'. None of these titles give her the right or ability to fully tell the story of a war that encompassed many people's misfortune and work. She is but one cog in a tired and rather traumatized machine that led to a single man falling over dead just like any other person.

It is after this reflection, that she grabs a notebook and heads downstairs from her writing place in Percy's old room to the heart of the Burrow. It is time for a much different course of action.

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Chapter: The Girl Who Wasn't Looney

Luna Lovegood is the first to sit down with Hermione to tell her own personal tale of kidnapping and war. It is an informal meeting. The two girls are curled up on Hermione's bed in the Burrow, a self writing quill and piece of parchment between them.

The sounds of Mrs. Weasley in the kitchen echo up the stairs. In another life it would be a very familiar normal setting. Two girls talking before dinner.

The stories lingering in between them ruin that normal fairytale view of what is really happening. They are two survivors of war and torture, girls not even fully out of their teens who have been left with scars and memories that neither one should ever have had to live with.

This is no normal girl chat before dinner.

Hermione watches Luna carefully. The too wide eyes that once sparkled in a far off place are much dimmer now. The dreamy look on her face less pronounced. While there is still a glow that radiates from Luna, one that shows her purity and love for life even after she has seen the worst of it, there is a stark difference between the woman sitting beside her and the one she met all those years ago with the cruel nickname even Hermione couldn't help but use.

Of course it hurt, but it was war after all. Everyone gets hurt in war. Everyone gets hurt in life. That's the thing about it. We all experience hurt eventually. I did already when I was a child. My mother she died in front of me when I was child. Death had already sat with me you know, waiting with me until my father arrived that day to find her body and I. Death as the story goes was an old friend of mine.

Which is why I wasn't that scared. I had worried of course. For my father, for my friends, for you and Harry and Ron when I was taken from the train. If war had come for me, the looney daughter of a loon then what had it done to the rest of you by then?

I tried to be very calm about it. Crying and screaming wouldn't help, you know. I would sit there in the cold and let myself drift away. There is more than one world. I went to one of the other's where things were never quite as bad.

I was not alone either and that helped. It wasn't me screaming into the darkness alone when it became too much, there were others screaming right back at me. All of our screams just finding our way to each other, to take care of one another.

Ollivander was much older than I was, so his bones always hurt more. I tried to help him to the best of my abilities. He found me my wand when I was a child. We all went into his shop children and came out witches and wizards like we were meant to be. Who wouldn't have wanted to take care of him and help him when it was his turn to be vulnerable like that?

The dungeon was always so dark and usually empty. There was so much space since we weren't locked into our own individual cells, just free to roam around the entire bottom floor. There wasn't too much to explore. Just cell after cell full of nothing but bones and cobwebs. And while the decoration was rather appropriate for the location, it wasn't exactly the most helpful of materials.

Eventually though I found this moss growing on the walls in one of the cells that leaked somehow from this faulty bathroom upstairs I'm sure that not even the elves would check. It was nothing I had ever seen before.

I spent a lot of time with Neville you see before everything, and he had taught me so much about Herbology. I knew that most mosses held some form of healing properties though the extent varied wildly depending on the type. What harm would it be to give this one a try? There was nothing that could make it worse for all of us anyway.

I ended up using it as a rub for Ollivander's bones. It numbed the pain after each session when they would tramp down the stairs and ask us more questions that none of us knew the answer to. It wouldn't work for me though. I think it has to do with the strength of the curse.

The Crutiatus curse is a very fickle thing you know. You have to mean it for it to cause damage. Draco never meant it when he cursed Ollivander, so it didn't hurt as much. Ollivander would lie there and scream until he was hoarse like the rest of us, but it never hurt him. He just had learned from the first war he said that to survive one must act and that is what he did.

He offered to anger her sometimes. To give me a break from the pain. But it was always okay to me though. I didn't mind. Better someone young who can withstand more pain. Someone that Bellatrix didn't look at with disgust like she did everyone else. She simply hated me, saw me as a fun plaything. Nothing like how she felt for those she wanted to exterminate.

Somewhere during Luna's speech, the two girls had reached out to each other to hold hands. Both their fingers shook rapidly even when intertwined. The after shocks of a Crucio from Bellatrix.

Harry was very stubborn you know right before the battle. He wouldn't listen to me. I'm afraid I had to raise my voice at him. He was so caught up in being the hero and in saving the day that he forgot to look at everyone else around him and remember that we were also there with him in this fight. I don't think I've ever raised my voice at anyone. Not even…her when she would come down to the dungeon singing in joy of what was about to happen. But, I needed to be heard that night with Harry. I knew that I could make a difference in whatever he needed to do.

I know that I have always been eccentric, but I was there. I had shown that my head could off in the clouds and my feet still firm on Earth. I just wanted him to listen and so I yelled.

It ended up helping him in the end I think, so I imagine I did the right thing.

The Battle gets so blurry for me when I think about it. I just remember the feeling of shaking and of never really stopping. I remember blood on my fingertips and plaster in my hair and my wand shaking when I held it up each time. There was so much going on, there was no escaping to any other world that night.

Afterwards when Ginny, you, and I were fighting off… Bellatrix, I kept imagining when she would torture me. I'm sure you felt the same way. It was very difficult to manage my feelings. I knew who was right in front of me, I knew where I stood, I knew what spells were coming out of my wand. But, it was like I could still feel the stones of the dungeon and her hair on my face and -

I'm very happy though that Mrs. Weasley was the one to kill her. I don't think I could have done it. My hands were shaking.

I hope I'm not too presumptuous, but when Mrs. Weasley screamed about not her daughter. I think she meant the two of us as well. She seems the type to mother the world. Food and sweaters and a home. That's what she had created for every person that she met. Seeing her is like seeing the freshly baked cookies and warm knitting one expects to see at home. No stone dungeons, no knife, no screams.

It is very...ironic that Bellatrix would end by her hand. A woman who was as cold as the stones of that dungeon and a woman who was as warm as the sweaters she wore.

The interview is very random, the topics and timeline scattered all over the place. Luna while utterly brilliant and creative has never been one to be able to stay on topic even with topics like the ones they end up speaking about.

They walk down from that room, shaking hands still holding on to each other, to enjoy the warm coddling of Mrs. Weasley as she asks if they have eaten yet.

In the end though Hermione leaves the interview exactly the way it was, random and scattered. In the set up as it is, you see the Luna before the torture and war. The random airy Ravenclaw who was always a bit scatter brained but who saw things in a way that everyone else could only ever hope to.

In the months after her interview, Luna "Looney" Lovegood becomes internationally known for finding an officially recognized medical use for Carceris Moss. Hermione makes sure to add it as a post script of the chapter.

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Chapter: The Boy Who Was Our King

The interview with Ron is awkward and funny. It's done right after an annual Weasley dinner, the two of them are sitting on the floor by the fireplace identical grins on their faces.

Despite their kiss at the battle, their friendship is still very intact. They realized within the first few days through a pathetic attempt of dating that they were better off friends instead of romantic partners.

Years worth of friendship leaves them with the most comfortable of feelings as they get ready to talk about some of the worst moments of their relatively short lives. She doesn't have a plan for this interview, not a central theme or moment she is hoping to have covered. Ron has been in the thick of it since the day he stepped on the train. The mere scope of what he could talk about is intimidating to her enough on it's own let alone if she were to try and keep him to only focus on what she wants.

The Burrow is not quiet exactly, with a house full of Weasley's there is no such thing really, but it is as close to quiet as it ever will be. Ron seems to make a moment in that silence before he turns his head to her and begins to speak.

I mean...everything has always been absolutely awful about this. From bloody three headed dogs to werewolves to that Umbridge woman. Since we were eleven it's always been just a whole mess of things we were dealing with, but we got through each time. Somehow. Not really sure myself on how. I thought that whatever was going to happen after Dumbledore died that it would be the same. We never had any plan or anything usually, we were just kinda stumbling around and making things work. I really thought that this is what was going to happen when we left on the run. That yeah it would be hard, but it would be manageable. We'd be able to do it.

But then that wasn't what it was like at all. It didn't seem manageable at all. I don't know what people think we were doing out there, but it was never a walk along the Black Lake. We were cold and hungry. I mean. I know I'm known for my appetite but that isn't an exaggeration. We weren't eating. I never felt that before, the feeling of an empty stomach. It wasn't even just missing Mum's cooking, though Merlin knows I did, it was just missing knowing that we were going to have food.

Everyday we would wake up in the cold, even with warming charms all over the place, and we would sit around and nibble on whatever we could find. We would be in this tent that we could barely leave and what would we do? It felt like failing all day. We would research and brainstorm and strategize. And then come together at lunch time and realize that all these things meant nothing because there was just another hurdle that was coming our way. After eating whatever cold stuff you could pull out of your bag, we would go back and try all over again.

All the while we were wearing this bloody Horcrux on our necks. I know the world kinda knows what those are now, but they will never be able to understand. It was feeding on us. It was taking all the hope right out of us. Here we were already realizing how hopeless things seemed, only for that thing to make it all worse. Everytime I wore it, I couldn't do anything but stew in it all. Stew in my thoughts, in my fears, in everything I could never say out loud to any of you.

When I was a kid, I was always worried about not being enough. Not enough for you, not enough for Harry. I kept imagining that when people looked at us they saw The Chosen One, The Brightest Witch of Her Age, and their friend. I never seemed like I was hero enough for this. I'm not scared of that anymore. I helped saved the world. I was out there risking my life...losing my family, when so many people were just keeping their head down and not doing anything. Because of that, I'm okay with talking about what I did. About leaving.

The only people who can judge me for this are you and Harry. You two are the only one's who opinion on this matters, and I know where you two stand now.

I left because there didn't seem like there was a point. To what we were doing. To what I was doing there. Yeah the horcrux was making it worse. But, those feelings were originally there still, just being more and more amplified the longer that I kept it on. I didn't understand why I had to be in that tent, doing nothing, when I could be back home with my family at least knowing for sure they were safe. I was scared. I know that Gryffindors aren't supposed to say that. But, Merlin. i was scared. I was terrified that while I was accomplishing nothing that my family could be out there dying.

I regret what I did. I don't want to seem like I don't. The moment that I did it, I knew that it was wrong. That I had made the worst mistake possible. I just know that it was also understandable. You were there 'Mione. You know what it was like. It was hard. It was scary. It was some of the worst months of all our lives.

I know that we were all suffering this past year. Whether at Hogwarts or at the Ministry or on the run. We were all just trying to make it. But it was like we had the whole world on our shoulders while out there. Everything was on us. If we failed, then it didn't matter what everyone else was doing. We would all be dead. We were just bloody teenagers. I still get angry about that 'Mione. Where were the adults? What were they doing?

We nearly died almost every single day. We were being chased, tortured, and starved. I know we are supposed to be these unshakable heroes, but I just need the world to know that we were just scared too. We were all scared, are still scared sometimes. Bravery isn't just never thinking about danger again, it isn't about not getting scared, it isn't about hesitating. I think that bravery is being scared and worried and all those things but still coming back. Still trying again. And that's what I did.

Hermione is surprised to see how in detail he could go into on their days in the run. More than that though, she finds her heart swelling at pride in him. Ron has never been the most eloquent or most introspective, but he is so smart she knows. He is so brilliant when he wants to be and more than that he is brave and good. It's she or Harry who is the quintessential Gryffindor in their trio, it is Ron through and through. Steadfast, bold, sometimes rash Ron.

It was taking her a while to decide what to name his chapter. It's Ron after all. He's a simple guy with a touch of complicated occasionally.

When they are all together for Seamus' birthday the title hits her though. The boys have started a croaky drunken rendition of 'Weasley is Our King' as she watches on the sidelines amused. It brings a smile to her face and in those slow moments of pure joy long after war, she realizes it is perfect. For many who read it they will not know what it means. They'll brush past the title of the chapter and not think twice about it. But there is an entire generation of Hogwarts students who will look at it and be brought to the same smile she has as she labels the chapter.

Ron bursts out laughing when she sends him a copy of his chapter with the title included.

---

Chapter: The Girl Who Was Scared

Hermione nearly faints of shock when Pansy Parkinson knocks on the Burrow's door. The shock continues when the former Slytherin says she wanted to offer up her own account of the War and more specifically, the Battle of Hogwarts.

It wasn't that Hermione had not planned on speaking to the Slytherin classmates she had, or even to those of an older set…who faced a different side of evil than the rest of her own circle had. She had already sent out a missive to one of them with plans to conduct the interview next month. Pansy Parkinson was not one she had thought would be open to the project though.

The closest the two had ever been was trading insults and sneers with books in hand in the Hogwarts halls. Usually only when trying to defend the dunderheaded boys they called friends who couldn't pass each other in the halls without wanting to jump one another.

She takes Pansy's surprise arrival in stride though. The girl is all but bawling already, and she knows that the girl has a legacy for a single sentence that she must be ready to face. Hermione offers Pansy some tea and asks her how it is that she heard of Hermione's work.

Draco Malfoy himself apparently had reached out to Pansy after seeing the missive Hermione had sent his mother and had suggested Pansy go ahead and offer up her story as well. Similar to her and Ron, Pansy and Malfoy's attempt to date outside of Hogwarts after the war had ended in a heartbreaking but still cherished friendship that led to her showing up at the doorstep today.

Once the tea is done and Pansy's eyes look less glassy with tears, the two take their seats and prepare to begin.

It's the most formal interview she has conducted so far. They sit across from each other at the kitchen table, both of their postures stiff and feet and hands constantly moving in an antsy fashion.

Other than Mr. Weasley out back, the Burrow is shockingly empty. It leaves an eerie silence in the seconds before the interview.

Hermione is almost expecting her to change her mind and leave as the long silence continues on when Pansy finally opens her mouth and starts talking.

I know their are some preconceived ideas about us Slytherin kids. Everyone thinks we were all up and ready to start fighting for…him. It wasn't like that though. Really. I'm not saying we were all perfect examples of untainted innocence but none of us are, are we?

It's true yes that we had all been raised with those pureblood supremacy ideals that he sprouted and pushed all the time. But it was all..games at first. Taunting you and Potter. There was no real malice there at least on my part. I didn't want either of you dead as a child. Who would? We were just all children playing at adult concepts we didn't even understand yet. How could we have understood the extent of what we were saying could go?

Those things we said as kids…they were bad of course. I know that. I know that there is no excusing the slurs we used or the things we joked of and threatened. But, those things weren't real to any of us. I didn't care about your blood. And from the start I had seen you scrape yourself during our first year broom courses, your blood was no different than mine. I just…I used that word because it was mean and would make your lip quiver and send all you bleeding heart Gryffindors into a frenzy.

All those years of cruelty and we were still clueless about what real hatred looked like. Calling Weasley poor was nothing compared to what we would hear our parents say or eventually do. What he would end up doing. We were completely clueless about him.

Our parents had all made these comments about him growing up. About if 'he' were around things would be different, that we would hold all the power again and that things would be perfect. But how could we have known what 'he' was really like? What it would be like to hear him in your head and say people were going to die?

It's like when your parents teach you about not talking to strangers. You learn it and listen to them I'm sure all nodding your head like you would in class, but you never expect to have to use it. Not really. Not in the way that really matters.

Hogwarts was hell for us too that last year.

The Carrows expected so much from us. They expected us to be cruel and evil just like them. They saw our house affiliation and last names and thought just like all of you did that we must enjoy the world that was being created around us. That we would enjoy the torture sessions and putting in the punishments and all the like. But, we were just children. Us older kids barely nearing that legal age, and the ones younger than that? Bless them. The pain they felt that whole year.

The younger years were so scared the entire time. They would cry at night! Cry into their pillows, into the couches, into our shoulders about how they wanted their parents. About how they wanted to go home. About how they couldn't close their eyes without hearing the screams of their fellow kids. And what could we do about it? There was no hidden room for us to scramble into. There was no Longbottom kid wonder to protect them and hide them.

All we could do was cry ourselves dry ourselves and beg them to please be quiet, to not let the Carrows come into the dungeon and hear them. If they had, they would have been punished for being weak.

Despite what people may have thought, we weren't treated like kings and queens down in those dungeons. It was a prison, a horrible prison. We had no one to turn to. The rest of the school, the rest of the country saw us as just as bad as our parents. Our parents were off doing Merlin knows what to Merlin knows who. My own mother was too busy taking off her-. It doesn't matter. It was just…a living hell that school. Not that any of us wanted to leave either.

If we did, what awaited us in the future? The same fate as Draco? He was already losing hair! Technically not even out of Hogwarts, and he was losing his hair! No one wanted that. No one wanted to have that thing branded on them. No one wanted to have him in our homes or in our heads. We were just counting down the days until all of it would be over, and we could just go home.

That day...that day was terrifying. The bloody evilest wizard was about to attack what was supposed to be the safest place in our world, Granger! How couldn't we have been scared? No one trusted us, our parents and friends would be fighting. Possibly against each other. We were all going to die we thought. Before we could even get to see our families again.

I did not want to die. The last thing I wanted to do was fight and die.

All of us, even you Granger, were barely adults if at all. Our whole lives were supposed to be ahead of us. I wanted that to happen. I wanted the rest of my life to be waiting for me. I didn't want to be one of countless teenage casualties that would be littering the floor in mere hours. I didn't want any of us to be that. I was by no means being selfless that night, but I was thinking of more than just myself too.

I wanted the war to be over before it even happened. Which is why I said to give up Potter.

It wasn't that I wanted him to die or because I hated him. It was because I was scared. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to fight. I just wanted it all to be over.

I know everyone thinks I did it to help him. That I was some little spy for him, eagerly doing what he demanded. Ha. I was scared of him. That's the big secret behind why I did it. No hatred, no evilness, no eagerness. I was just plain terrified for my life.

What was Potter? One single boy in comparison to all of us I told myself? To a whole school full of children who couldn't even travel alone legally?

I ended up fighting anyway you know. That is the cruelest part of all. I ended up having to fight for my life anyway. You think his followers were asking our names or even looking at our ties when they were wreaking havoc in the castle blowing walls to bits?

We weren't exactly safe in the dungeons. Children screaming because no one thought to sheperd them off in a secret tunnel because they were just Slytherin children. They were evil all 11 years of them. There was stone everywhere, dust was caught up in my throat. I can still feel it there even now, choking me to death and blinding me as I just tried to fight to survive.

I fought alongside my friends, my housemates, my teachers. I fought along side you and Potter. I cast pathetic and shaky healing charms and threw protegos around and did my best.

Nobody remembers that though. They will never remember that.

All they remember are the words spoken by a terrified girl who just didn't want to die.

The last words are spoken in a distressed wail. Pansy is heavily crying. Her once pristine mascara is now full of streaks, and her heavily manicured nails have left clear as day imprints in her palms that Hermione can see from all the way across the table.

Hermione watches the girl she once considered an evil traitor to the school and feels disgusted with herself. She conjures Pansy a tissue and waits silently for the girl to finish.

"Please Granger, just get it right," Pansy tells her as she leaves.

In the late hours of that night as she slaves away over her notes, she keeps that promise. In the introduction to Pansy's account, she makes a single note.

Pansy Parkinson was a 7th year Hogwarts student, who fought bravely along side her classmates during the Battle of Hogwarts.

The chapter is one of her personal favorites.

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Chapter: The Man Who Came Home

She was visiting Harry and Ron at the ministry for their annual lunch when she bumps into Percy. He's the one who suggests the interview first. He stutters when he talks, an after affect of a curse sent his way as he cried over his dead brother. She readily agrees. She had been hoping to interview someone from the Ministry about what it was like under Voldemort's rule, an entire area of the War that she never even touched beyond one rather catastrophic visit while on the run. Who would be better she thinks that a man who believed in it so fervently?

They sit in his office with a cup of tea for each of them. They see each other at least twice a week at the Burrow when he stops by for meals but the meeting is awkward none the less. She crosses and uncrosses her legs multiple times in the long silence between them. While the two were known for their politeness, there is something that feels wrong about making small talk when something as big as War still looms between them. He clears his throat three times before he talks.

The Ministry fell apart easily. It showed how unstable it really was. All these years of looking up to it every time Dad brought me, the years of working in here with this sense of pride that I was taking part in our governmental system. I really thought I was a part of an institution that was shaping the world into the best place that it could be. But, it was nothing really. How shaky must a government be to be toppled so easily? What kind of poison must have already been allowed to build in it's foundations that it crumpled the way it did, with the consequences that it did?

I know that Fudge and his refusal to acknowledge that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned should have been the first sign, but I still - I still understand that. Denial is a strong feeling. The refusal to see what was right in front of us that was a coping mechanism for all of us I think. Even me. Even with the family I had been raised in telling me differently.

But Fudge did see the truth eventually, we all saw it with our own eyes. It was no longer a leap of faith - something that you would be hardpressed to find in a world like ours where we don't have the same Muggle deities you would know - it was a cold harsh truth that looked at us with it's red eyes and serpent like face. I truly believed that the Ministry was even more vital than that it ever had been before. People need strong organized leaderships in time of trouble like that I told myself. That is exactly what our government system is for I kept saying.

It is naive of me I know, but I didn't think that corruption to that level was possible. I didn't think that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would be able to just wave his wand and take over an entire country almost instantaneously. I wish I could tell you what were the signs before everything fell, but I was well and truly blind to them. I thought that things were going well.

Until they weren't.

After Scrimgeour the change of powers was abrupt. There was no real vote, it just happened within the hour. The entire building was in chaos.

I am not as well versed in Muggle history as you are I suspect, but I had read a decent deal on the subject of dictatorships before this and most certainly since then. What strikes me the most Hermione is that we all think we are different. don't we? Throughout history the people in power just before the world falls a part all think that they are different - that we are different. That it will never happen to us, to our system, to our country. Inevitably it does however happen. We are all proven arrogant blind fools, and it is more than just us that suffer those consequences.

The situation was different for everyone of course. Especially the muggle-born workers. Other than Umbridge not many agreed with what was going on. These were people we had worked with for years, some who had worked together for decades. Even some of the most pure-blooded of people who may have sneered and said things before were left in this state of shock when they saw these people dragged from their offices or were forced to snap this person's wand right in front of them.

We couldn't do anything though. Protesting would just draw attention to ourselves. More so we were still in shock. No one was ready or prepared for this. Like I said, we all thought that with people like us in power how could something like this ever happen? Arrogance pure arrogance like I said.

I had complete faith in the Ministry once just like many of my coworkers then. While that trust was shaking, there was always hope that things would get better. They just never did. It was ignorant of us to think things would change. But really what is arrogance if not just another form of ignorance.

The Battle of Hogwarts was our way of turning our backs on the corrupt Ministry. The big chance to break free from what had been holding us back. The world had gone to hell, so it didn't matter anymore really what our titles were or our salaries or even our pride in our government. There was just life and death with a path now that we could walk down.

It is tragic really. We all were in government because we thought that we were shaping these revolutionary paths our country could walk on together, but it was a group of children that ended up being the one having to shape the path we really needed.

For people like me who were trying to block out the oncoming war, desperate to ignore the signs, this was a wake up call. This was our moment where our eyes were no longer blinded at all not by loyalty or by optimism or even by arrogance. So many of those who had been stubborn and blind before came out of that moment better men and women. Men and women who were finally doing what we thought we had been doing from the beginning - helping to create a better nation.

It was too late for me though. The things I had done, said, and the things I had chosen to miss. None of those things were worth the lesson I learned that day. Many people including my own family tell me again and again, that maybe that is why this all happened. That it was so I could become a better man.

I disagree. What lesson in life could I have learnt, what kind of man can I become, that would ever make the loss of my little brother worth it? There is no lesson that makes that a fair trade.

If I had just come back home earlier maybe things may have been different. Maybe we wouldn't have ended up in that exact spot. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten crushed by that wall.

Maybe he would still be alive.

Gosh. That's what a war is isn't it? One scenario of maybes. The worst scenario of maybes.

I'm not an emotional or sentimental person usually. You know this. I am not my mother who is full of nothing but pure-hearted sentimentality for everyone she meets. Nor am I Ron who is so governed by his emotions. I'm not-I'm not George or Fred. I was never the most carefree and expressive with my emotions either.

But I was a brother. I was a brother to six other siblings. I was an older brother to four. That is something that was who I was. It was more than just a fact people would use to tease me growing up. It was something I was always told to take great pride in. I have always taken pride in my responsibiliites. You saw this of course when we were in school together. But I also took pride in my responsibilities outside of that as well.

I was a toddler when Fred and George were born, but as soon as I was able to understand Dad and Mum told me that I was a big brother and that with that came responsibility. I truly think the first proud moment of my life was that day when I looked down at them with that in mind. That these were my responsibility, that it was my job to help them and protect them and make them happy.

I was never perfect but everything I did was meant to do that. It may not have been what people thought of as loving or brotherly, but giving advice on classes or trying to keep them out of trouble that was my way of taking care of them.

That day at the battle it was the most ultimate failure of my responsibilities. I had failed so much in the years prior. I had failed my parents, my siblings, my country. But, that day. I failed in a way that I will never truly be able to recover from. I would have given my life to save him. I would have given my life to have him here. I would have given away my position, my badges, my awards. None of it meant anything the way that he did and my family.

My mother's loss is incomparable I know. George's loss is something beyond I could ever understand. But my loss Hermione. What about my loss? I am still a brother. I am still responsible for three younger siblings. But, I am not the same person that I was. I lost someone that I loved from the moment he was born till the day he died. I lost someone that was my responsibility. He was my first responsibility. He was supposed to be my responsibility until the day I died before him.

I am many things Hermione. Talking today you know that I am arrogant, that I am blind, that I am naive. I am also a brother. That that is something that I will always hold dear.

Hermione is sure that no interview has made her cry the way this one has, she finds herself nearly sobbing herself as Percy finishes up. Tears are streaming down the older Weasley's face, and she forces herself to not look away. Percy has a reputation of course for many things, but this is the real man sitting before her. She owes it to him, and she owes it to Fred to really look at him. To see him for what he is. A man who loves his family just as fiercely as any other Weasley does.

He talks a bit more about the Ministry and the changes made since then, but it is that specific section that speaks to her the most even after she leaves his office that day. As an only child, she had never known what it felt like to have a sibling. Harry was her brother in every way that counted so that is the closest comparison she can conjure in her own thoughts. Remembering the pain and guilt she felt when she thought he was dead, she feels herself crying anew.

She feels as though she understands Ron in a way she never had before. The empty look so often found in Molly Weasley's eyes is something that no one can ever forget, the way that George turns to someone that isn't there still that is something that people think of whenever they see him, but the loss of the rest of the Weasley siblings is one that even she forgets about.

There is no such thing as just a brother. They all lost something far greater than anyone ever considers.

When she writes the post script to Percy's chapter, she sobs. The tears stain the parchment. Memories of Fred are brought up with each word.

Fred Weasley was a forever cherished friend. A historic student. A beloved son. An appreciated brother.

---

Chapter: The Mother Who Said Dead

This interview is even more formal than the one with Pansy Parkinson. Narcissa Malfoy looks all the part of a pureblood debutant even after her husband's imprisonment when she greets Hermione at the Floo. Her prim hair and aristocratic expression is stern and detached nearly if it weren't for the softness in her eyes. They remind Hermione of her own mother.

Draco Malfoy stands next to his mother, purple coloring the bottom of his eyes and a level of haggard dishevelment radiating off of him even if he is pristinely dressed. Hermione fumbles after shaking hands with Narcissa, not knowing exactly how to greet her former classmate. He seems to take pity on her momentary panic because the faintest hint of a smirk snakes across his face, as he holds out his hand and tells her how lovely it is to see her busy haired self again. She feels herself blush and eagerly follows Narcissa when the older woman says they can conduct the interview in one of the sitting rooms.

Hermione sits in a large arm chair across the couch where Narcissa sits. Draco sits beside her holding his mother's hand. The mother and son duo who were pardoned from their mistakes. Hermione herself had sent in a written testimony on both of their behalf. She wonders if the two of them ever read it before asking if Narcissa is ready to begin.

The Malfoy Matriarch squeezes her son's hand one last time before begining.

My husband was not a good man. I'm not going to make excuses for him. More than not beings good man though, he was foolish. He was ill prepared for what he was getting us into.

The first time around I was a blushing newlywed I admit, I saw him through the rose tinted glasses that can only come with young first loves. Wherever he led, I would have followed. And followed I did. That First War all those years ago, I watched him go off knowing exactly what he was doing. I told myself that that was what a man was meant to do. To be powerful and to fight for his ideals.

But then, I found out I was pregnant. It isn't easy, Miss Granger, for many of us pureblooded women to have children. The purer the blood, the harder it is to conceive. I have been told that muggle royalty often faces the same low birth rates that we do. Having Draco…it was my own personal miracle.

It was then that I knew what real love was. Those rose tinted glasses I had for my husband fell away and even then I lived in fear of how far things would go. I did not want my son to grow up in a world where we were at war. But things ended so soon after that. Your young Mister Potter saved the day even as a child, and the world was going back to normal. My world would be going back to normal.

I realize there are so many things I could have done differently that would have changed our paths. I could have told the truth about my husband his lies of being Imperiused then. I could have raised Draco all on my own without the fear of a cane coming down on him or with hatred being seeped into his heart. But, I didn't. I let those things happen. As foolish as my husband, thinking that the dangers had long since passed.

But war always comes again and come again it did. I can not speak to those early years before his full return. My displeasure at my husband's actions then were no secret, and he made sure I was left in the dark quite often because he feared my wrath. I threatened to leave so many times, to take Draco with me and leave the country once and for all. But I never could.

Instead I forced myself to live through yet another war where my husband had once again decided our side.

There would be no winners in this war Miss Granger. My home was taken over by the most evil and disgusting men in those final years of the War. Deatheaters trampling my carpets, spilling blood on my floors, leering at me as if I were another victim they were waiting to get in their clutches.

This house became the dwelling of the most evil man in the history of out world. There are no words I can use to describe that to those who will read this account. The violation that it is. Homes are the extension of the mother Miss Granger, I am sure Mrs. Weasley would tell you that. My home was violated everyday.

The places where I once played with my son were now where these grown men played with his pain and survival. They would torture him right before my eyes on the very places where he would show me his toys and beg for more time awake before sleeping.

It was as if an impenetrable darkness was spreading through my home and worse yet spreading through my family. There was so much pressure for Draco to take the mark. It was the punishment for my husband's mistake. My boor. My child. He wasn't even of age, but he was forced to have his mind ripped apart again and again by that monster. He was told repeatedly that he was to take the mark and complete his mission or my husband and I would be killed.

There were tears running down their faces, mother and son. Hermione feels herself shaking at what Narcissa is saying. It is not new information. The whole world has heard of the threats that Draco Malfoy faced by Voldemort, the whole world had thrown out their opinion on it as well. Seeing her schoolyard bully reduced to tears, as he pointedly tries not to meet her gaze, nearly breaks her inside.

Before she can stop herself she is off her feet and walking towards them. She crouches besides the couch they are sitting on and reaches out her hands to them. One to each. Narcissa gives her a watery smile and accepts the hand in a tight grip. The connection seems to steady the woman as she takes slow deep breaths.

Hermione forces herself to look at the boy that sits on the other side of her other outstretched hand. He is eyeing it warily, a tear dripping down his chin onto his shirt. Hermione is not perturbed. She waits.

Slowly his pale hand reaches out to her as well, and she feels him softly hold it. She gives both hands a squeeze and waits again. She will give them all the time they need to recover before Narcissa continues again.

Minutes later they both let go of her hands and brush away their tears. Hermione stands and returns to her chair, ready to hear the rest of the story.

Draco's…situation is well known however. It is his story to tell one day if he is ever ready. There is something else I would like to speak to instead, something that is not known to many outside of what remains of that inner circle.

Something that I feel great shame in speaking of but must be told. For the benefit of those that live with the memories of this yet can never speak of them in fear of disgust.

The Dark Lord may not have looked like a man, but he still was one. His body was not what it had once been back in the war. Then he could smile and charm any woman into his bed. But, he was still a man beneath those robes. A frightful monster of a man.

Like most men...he had needs. His rages and tantrums often led to him feeling…stifled he said. He needed a release he would tell us. The wives of his inner circle were those that were called upon to be that release.

Some, like my sister, were all too eager to please him in that way. It was an honor to lay with the man that they saw as a near God. That was their King, their Lord, why would they not want to be called into his bed?

But for many of us women this was nothing more than another form of torture. For all the…reputations our husbands may have, most pureblood women of our class would never betray their spouses in that way. To lay with another man, monster or not, was not something we would ever do.

Those of us who refused were abused and threatened. If our husbands tried to stand between us and the punishment that awaited us for our refusal then they would be tortured or our children called forward to take that punishment.

I never broke Miss Granger. This is something I believe we have in common. We have both lain on that Drawing Room floor, while our screams echoed through this Manor and no one met our gaze. I would rather have died a million deaths than have Draco take the punishments meant for me. And Lucius, for all his faults, was never in good health after his first stay in Azkaban. This level of torture would have killed him.

I would never break I told myself. And never break I did no matter what was thrown towards me.

I can not speak for all the families that were a part of this side of the war. I can only speak for my own. We lived in constant fear. I held my breath every time he would appear. Any tantrum he threw was one more closer until it would be my husband or my son at the end of his wand.

I thought that surely the day you escaped and word was given that Draco had not confirmed your identities that it would be then. But, Bellatrix was blamed for that. It is cowardly I know to be grateful that one's own kin is the one being harmed than those closer to you, but I have no shame in that. There is nothing I wouldn't have done or turned an eye to for my son and his survival.

Which I am sure you and everyone else reading this knows.

There have been many people who have questioned why I lied. Why would Narcissa Malfoy of the favored family, look up at the Dark Lord himself and lie?

My answer is the Dark Lord could not live.

The horrors that would happen if he did, is too disgusting to even imagine. I had seen the darkness he had brought into my own home enough to know that there was nothing he would touch that wouldn't be destroyed and perverted from it's original beauty. This world would have become a shell of what it had once been if he had won that day.

When I announced dead, I didn't announce it about Mister Potter. To myself I was announcing the Dark Lord's death sentence. It was my version of a verdict if you will. My way of laying down his punishment for the first and final time. It's that Slytherin ruthlessness you know.

Draco was somewhere in the Castle, and I wanted to be able to return to him with a better world behind me. Mister Potter was that better world.

My life if the Dark Lord were to realize did not matter. I loved my son enough to face it's loss again and again. Just like I had faced every curse and hex and slash against my body before.

You know that kind of love well Miss Granger.

It's the kind of love that only a mother can provide. I am sure you have been on it's receiving end before. And I hope that one day if you choose, you have your own children and experience just how fierce that kind of love is.

The kind of love that saved your best friends life.

The kind of love that killed my sister.

The kind of love that allowed me to 'save the world' as you so aptly put it in your testimony on my behalf.

One of the smallest pleasures of surviving what has come so far is that I get to see what that kind of love can do when it comes to rebuilding a nation.

At the end of the interview, Hermione is surprised by the soft hug Mrs. Malfoy gives her. She finds herself tearing up at the affection. It is a true mother's hug. The kind she will never get again by her own mother who is sill in Australia with no memory of the kind of love that she must have once felt to for her own and only child.

Draco offers to walk her out once all is said and done. His face is now dry from tears, but it is obvious that he is still shaken up by his mother's confession. She can't imagine living with those memories everyday. She accepts his offer and she stands awkwardly by the Floo once they're there.

He shuffles around nervously, clearly waiting for her to say something.

"You should tell your story as well, Malfoy," she says quietly.

When his body stiffens suddenly, she worries he will run her off or lash out with an insult like he would have done as a child.

But that was a boy's reaction, this man instead looks at her and nods.

"I appreciate that Granger, I really do," he says.

Hermione blushes her way through a scheduling for this with him and later on when she finds herself pouring over the chapter, she wonders how what Malfoy will feel when he sees people reading his mother's story.

His mother who is far braver than anyone has ever given her credit for.

Harry decides when he reads through her interview, that it's his favorite chapter so far.

---

Chapter: The Boy Who Led The Army

Neville Longbottom is the next to speak to her. Her first ever friend at Hogwarts is not exactly enthusiastic to tell his tale, but when she writes to him to ask him if he would be willing to participate in her venture his response is almost instant. There is no one else he says he would trust to tell it right.

She sits on one of the tables in one of the more private greenhouses at Hogwarts while he works on some of the plants. Since finishing up his schooling via testing at the Ministry like many of them, he has been interning with Professor Sprout, working hard to take up some of her younger year classes for her the upcoming year.

Hermione smiles at the endearing sight of him on his knees in dirt, holding one of the most hideous plants she has ever seen in her life delicately in his now manly hands. The growth spurt he experienced right before the war seems to have barely stopped. He is taller than even Ron now and has the broad shoulders one would not expect from a man who touches the petals of poisonous flowers with the same level of delicacy one would expect a man to caress his lover's cheek with.

No matter the stubble that he grows or the girls she knows now fawn over him in the public, he will always be the same sweet boy that she met on the train that very first day.

She swings her legs back and forth up on the table, enjoying the small pleasures of being back in her beloved school again while she waits for him to begin. This many interviews in to her process, and she has already learned to never fill someone else's silence. Let them fill it all on their own.

He stands up and brushes off his hands before turning toward her and leaning against the other table across from her. He gives her a hesitant smile before diving right in.

The younger kids took it hard. I mean you spend 11 years of your life hearing about this amazing school only to find it as a living hell. This was worst then not finding their way to class or even facing some bullies in the halls. This was torture. This was propaganda. This was punishment. Their first steps into Hogwarts and they were being forced to feel torture under the hands of their fellow classmates.

Who bloody thinks like that? What kind of evil do you have to be to think of something like that? Then pass it off as education?

We all tried our best to keep their spirits up. Tried to tell them about all the fun stuff we got to do in the past years at school. Some of them couldn't believe that Dumbledore had once been here, even the ones who had been here when Dumbledore was seemed to forget there had been a world before this. I mean when stories of freezing cold Quidditch matches where Harry Potter fell of his broom are heaven to these kids, what else could we do?

I thought that maybe re-starting Dumbledore's Army could help. If not the younger kids to have hope, then at least help us older kids remember that we had fought back before and we could fight back again. My grandmum used to tell me that the reason why Dementors don't like Azkaban so much as they like the Hogwarts grounds is because there is no joy or hope left in that place. That's what Hogwarts was like before we got the DA started again. It was like Azkaban. I just wanted there to be a little joy and hope left, no matter how impossible it seemed.

I've never been much of a leader, that was always Harry or you or Ron. I knew that I could do this though. I knew that I could get this thing set up and then get others like Ginny and Seamus to help me with it. We all could fight just a little more, they just needed someone to get it started. So that's what I did. I found the Room of Requirement again and got it all started.

Came with a lot more problems than we had the first time around if you could believe it.

It was hard trying to meet up together at night with the Carrows were always patrolling the corridors. If they caught you the punishment would be worse than most people could imagine. It was actual torture. It was cutting us up and then healing us just enough we could come back to class the next day, not as if we really had a choice about that either. Only way we could get away without being punished by them was if Snape caught us. He'd calls us dunderheads and intimidate us with those bloody billowing robes of his, but he would send us on our way under threat if he caught us again we would face punishment. He kept catching us though and usually nothing happened worse than scrubbing cauldrons if he did punish us. But occasionally if we were really unlucky a Carrow would be the one to catch us.

I always offered to take the punishment. Wasn't fair to any of the rest after all, it was my idea to be meeting up. Ginny and Luna before she got taken would do the same. Even a few of the other seventh years like Seamus, Pavarti, Padma, and Lavender would do the same. I know that these guys don't get mentioned a lot when talking about the war but they did so bloody much too. I couldn't have done all this stuff alone. I could sit down with them and think of paths to get students where, how to reach out to Aberforth, they would take punishment after punishment to keep doing what we were doing. They were so bloody brave, the whole lot of them.

It was hard to get any real updates on what was going on outside of the castle. Owls were getting intercepted all the time. It was too dangerous to out right ask about any of the war efforts. We were pretty much clueless except for the occasional fact from Aberforth, and you saw him for yourself back then. He wasn't exactly the most optimistic source of news for the lot of us. Figured it was better off to just stop asking him.

We really thought this thing was never going to end. We were planning on it never ending, thinking of ways we could sneak kids out bit by bit and find them some safe houses to go to. Then Arianna showed up and led me straight to you all that night. Damn well happy we were when you showed up. Not that it lasted long with the battle right after.

It was good to have Harry leading the charge again. As much as he could. I'm no Harry. I can't rally the other students or just people in general like he can. When Harry speaks, you just wanna listen. When I speak, it's this battle just to be heard in the first place. But Harry he trusted me. All of you trusted me and I guess after a year of just trying to do best by them so did everybody else.

I knew that the battle wasn't going to be easy. I mean it just felt like it was something final, something epic that we were all just small parts in. Seamus was a bit happy though, got to blow things up and all. Bit nice to see someone enjoy themselves even a bit that night.

Anyway, I pretty much wandered around helping when I could until well the Harry thing. It seemed like I was a million places all at once. I was running up and down stairs, jumping over these piles of rubbles, screaming out these instructions and orders like I knew what I was doing. There was no plan really. I was just telling people what I thought was instinct, what I thought made the most sense. It was pretty lucky that for the most part I turned out right. Once again Seamus and Pavarti were big helps, so was Cho and Oliver Wood. They took to the skies and you know I was never good with a broom. Getting them up there with a group of fliers was one of the best ideas I've ever had I think.

Then it just seemed like everything was over. All that work trying to keep up hope, trying to make sure that everything went smoothly so Harry could save the day, it all felt like it was for nothing for a second. Cause there he was in Hagrid's arms while Dumbledore laughed. But then I got angry at myself and everyone else. Harry, Harry is important yeah, but so were the rest of us. We were more than just him. We didn't need him there to put up a fight at least. So I walked up and said what I said.

Bet you everyone thought I was pretty daft for a while. I don't even know where it came from. Just that I didn't want to lose Hogwarts. That I didn't want all these people behind me to think that things were over just because of Harry. That would happen when hell froze over. We wouldn't give up then. I had to be sure of it. It didn't matter what Voldemort did to me. I just had to make people, which ain't ever been easy for like I said. Seeing everyone staring at me like I was some kind of hero then, it made me a bit uncomfortable. My whole life I thought I didn't live up to my parent's legacy. That they were these great heroes, and I was just this kid who couldn't get through a single potions class without messing up.

I'm not a hero still, at least I don't think I am. I mean Harry, you, and Ron are all heroes. I just killed a snake. It's not much compared to everyone else. I just got a whole bunch of kids together which you all had already done before and then I just swung a sword and got a bit lucky. That isn't this epic heroic thing really.When I saw you and Ron running from the snake, I just had to stop it. It was completely mental of me too. I didn't think though, I just sliced. No one was more surprised than me when it worked.

I still am proud of it though.

I always felt like the odd one out in Gryffindor. I'm not the smartest or the best with spells like you. Don't have Harry's good looks or Ron's bravery. Was mostly on my own. Everyone was always sure that I wasn't a Gryffindor. My own family thought I was a squid growing up and was sure I wouldn't be like my parents in Gryffindor. I thought it was a fluke myself at first. Thought it was a pity placement because the hat remembered my parents.

All I ever wanted was to make them proud. To make their loss and sacrifices that night Bellatrix showed up worth it.

I wasn't the chosen one. I was never going to be the one to save us all, but I did my part. I know that I made my parents proud that day and had probably done it even before that. Every time I go and visit them, I think about that. I think about how they would be so proud of me if they knew what I've done. That I was just like them.

Maybe not a hero like them but a Gryffindor for sure.

After sitting through many interviews that had left her devastated or torn up inside, Neville makes her smile. Since their very first year no one, herself included, had looked at Neville the way they should have. This man was more brave than all of them put together. The sorting hat had made no mistake with him. He was exactly where he was meant to be. She doesn't even want to imagine what the war would have been like if they hadn't had someone like him here at Hogwarts when they were gone, leading an army.

She hugs him so tightly before she leaves. She almost doesn't want to let go of him. There is something nostalgic about him. Even before Harry and Ron, there had been Neville. And she has no doubt that for the rest of her life there will always be Neville with his quiet bravery, his self-deprecation, and his delicate hands. She wishes the best to Hannah through him before leaving and promises to stop by for dinner one night in the future.

When she goes home and edits, she finds herself re-reading Neville's chapter again and again. There is something so light and hopeful about it. She knows that the people who read it will close it knowing that the name Longbottom means something. In every generation.

---

Chapter: The Woman Who Loved Us All

It's months into the book when she stops by Headmistress McGonagall's office. It's an interview she had been waiting to do. The woman who she had always looked up to, even now.

It was McGonagall who showed up at her doorstep on her eleventh birthday, hair in it's ever present bun and her robes looking out of place until she told the Granger family exactly why Hermione was able to do all these impossible feats when she was upset.

It was McGonagall who went over her schedule each year to explain the benefits of each class since her own parents would not be able to advise her like her peers parents did.

It was McGonagall who showed Hermione the spell to deal with her monthly cycle when it started her second year and she was nearly wailing louder than Moaning Mrytle did in the girls' lavatory because she didn't know what to do about it in a magical school like Hogwarts.

It was McGonagall who invited her into her office for a biscuit and listened to Hermione cry her way through an explanation about why she conjured up birds to attack Ron of all people on school grounds.

She is welcomed with a hug and the invite for a biscuit this time around as well, though many different tears have painted her cheeks since those earlier times.

Behind the desk are two men looking down at her from their frames. One who smiles at her serenely with twinkles in his eyes, another with a slight sneer and roll of his eyes.

Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape stare down at their replacement every single day she knows, and she has heard over dinners that they enjoy making the new Headmistress threaten to have them removed with their continuous spats above her head throughout the days.

"Ignore them. Quite the spectacle they like to make of themselves," The headmistress glares at the now arguing portraits.

The elderly woman had aged in the months before, the war heavily marking her face with even more wrinkles. Now with the war through though, her shoulders didn't seem to be weighed down so heavily Hermione notes.

Hermione nibbles on her biscuit and after minutes of catching up on both their respective works, the Headmistress starts the interview.

I am a woman of action Miss Granger. I am not one to enjoy sitting on the sidelines. While my sorting was decades ago, there is still a part of me that loves jumping head first into a situation that is all too common to Gryffindors.

As Deputy Headmistress I got to do just that.

I got to be both rational and in the action. I got to see students grow and learn. I got to take a part in both teaching and protecting them. There is no greater joy than that Miss Granger.

My you must understand that each student that passes through these halls and more specifically my house are like my own children.

I am present when your parents are not. I have comforted more than a fair share of heartbroken girls. I have had to speak of the birds and the bees to many students.

My job allows me to play a major role in the biggest parts of your life.

That is why it was so painful when I wasn't able to do anything each time that he - Voldemort came to power. I have had to watch countless students, children, take up their wands and fight for a world full of adults who often did nothing to help them. Child soldiers are never a pleasant thing to witness. It is made all the more unpleasant when it is the very children who you have helped raise who you must see fight and lose their lives.

If you remember correctly Miss Granger, I helped your family through their first venture into Diagon Alley to shop for your first year of school. I did the same for Miss Lily Evans. I helped her take her first steps into our magical world.

She was only 21 when she died.

Hermione hears herself gasp at the revalation.

It is jarring I know to be reminded of that. So many of course think of poor Mister Potter when they think of that night. Of how young he was, just a babe, when his family was murdered.

But, they were young as well.

Miss Evans and Mister Potter were only 21 that night. Of those 21 years, seven had been spent at Hogwarts. A third of their lives they had spent in my care.

There are no words that I can use to explain the extent of that loss of all their losses during that first War. The McKinnons, the two Mister Blacks, the Longbottoms. I had sat through their younger year tears, mediated their fights, had dealt out the discipline that helped shape them into the fine young men and women they became. The type of men and women who would sacrifice it all to save us all.

I carried that pain with me throughout the years, facing each of their ghosts when their younger siblings and eventual children showed up on my stool as I placed the sorting hat on their head.

I thought that a higher power would let you all have the lives they had gotten before it was all taken away. Years on these grounds where you could laugh, could make mischief, could fall in love.

Instead, I was forced to face the reality again and again that you were all growing up in somehow a worst world. You were growing up in a world where the very thing that had killed that previous generation was coming back stronger each year with it's sights set on Mister Potter and those of you around him.

It was like watching pigs raised for slaughter. As if the loss of life that came the first time was inevitable in happening again.

Every year left me wringing my hands through the summer months wondering how it could possibly get worse for you all. For you children.

That final year I learned all too well just how worse it could get for children in this brutal world.

The Carrows are every educator's worst nightmare. These are people who should have never been able to step on this school's hallowed grounds let alone be allowed to touch the very children that were put in our care to protect.

Their pleasure in torturing the children at this school at having them torture each other, it killed us staff day by day. The screams are something that I still hear in my sleep, Miss Granger. The type of screams that you are all too aware of. The sight of their shaking hands and of their bruised faces, as I brought them into my classroom or office. The look of desperation these little faces looked up at me with.

There is nothing I will live with more than this.

I - we all had to stand back as much as we could. Anything we did could be used to throw us all out of the castle and have more of them put in our places instead. There would be no one to protect the children then. They would have been left to the mercy of the likes of Greyback or merlin forbid a Lestrange.

The only thing we could do was live with our lack of action, with our complicity with the trauma that an entire generation of children will have to live with and do our best to heal and comfort them when they came into our own classrooms.

I remember Filius centered his entire curriculum around healing spells that year as well on things like concealment and glamour charms. Things that could practically be used to help these years of children that had to survive this hell.

We were all just waiting, hoping, for the day we could take this castle back from their hands. When we could finally do what we were meant to do- to protect, to teach, to lead.

The day of your, Mister Weasley, and Mister Potter's arrival was that day for us all.

Hogwarts is my home, when given the opportunity I was all to happy to protect it.

At the time I thought Snape was a traitor to us all. I didn't think twice of taking him on. Of taking all of them on that were going to be walking onto these grounds and into these walls.

I may be a teacher Miss Granger, but I was once a very good duelist. I was a champion back in my own days of Hogwarts. I battled Tom Riddle himself as a fellow student in the classroom and won on quite a few of those occasions.

Much like Mrs. Weasley, my skills today seem to be forgotten in place of the title of my occupation.

Not that that dueling could do much in the scope of War. Not in the way that I would have wished.

The loss of Mister Weasley and Miss Brown and all the other students that perished during the Battle are heavy on me to this day. A woman of my age has done many things. They did not get to do any of them. I will receive no invitation for Miss Brown's wedding. I will not find myself punishing a matching set of Weasley twin children, as I always expected to do. I will never be able to see Mister Creevey's photos in the Prophet, as I was always sure I would. There is a lifetime of experiences that they will never have.

Let this be known Miss Granger, that I would gladly have taken any of their places. I would have taken every curse, every piece of wall, every bite that came their way.

As little comfort as that offers the survivors of their loss, it is something I think about everyday. As I sit in this chair and send out new batches of letters to another new year of Hogwarts students, I think of the ones that are no longer here.

They will not be forgotten about in these walls. In this office of the Headmistress.

Hogwarts had had many wonderful Headmasters and Headmistresses as you well know.

I must live up to perhaps the greatest two of all of those. Men of many faults, of many mistakes, but who both did their best to protect your lives in these castle walls until the moment they died on it's grounds.

Hogwarts is still standing, Miss Granger. It will continue to stand for years to come.

As long as there are students ready to be taught, there will be staff ready to teach and protect them.

At the end of the interview Hermione is ecstatic to be offered the job as part-time Transfiguration Professor for the upcoming year. McGonagall assures her that taking on the teaching of the younger years will allow the Headmistress to have more time to focus on the continued renovation efforts and the reconciliation efforts she would like to create for the houses.

She readily accepts the job, and hugs the Headmistress goodbye.

Before she leaves though she spares a glance to the two bickering portraits who give her their own version of a congratulations, one cheerful and vague and another snark filled and to the point.

Hogwarts staff had been home to some of the greatest men and women. She would soon be joining their ranks.

After finishing the draft, she lets Ginny read it to get her thoughts on it. The chapter has Ginny in tears. There is something deep and raw about the love the Headmistress has for her students. Any student who reads the book, will finish that chapter feeling a warmth in their hearts from the knowledge that no matter the homes they left behind they will always find love at Hogwarts and a woman who cared for them all.

---

Chapter: The Man Who Is

Unsurprising Malfoy and her are sitting in the private room of a posh restaurant when they conduct his interview. They have been owling back and forth since his mother's interview and there is something almost poetic she feels about having him be her second to last interview. The two boys who oppositely shaped her childhood are the last two men she has to sit down with before sending off her final draft.

It takes them much longer to get started than she expects. When he had originally suggested interviewing over dinner, she had thought it was just so the busy Malfoy heir could multi-task. Instead they spend the entirety of dinner speaking of everything except the interview and the war. They discuss her upcoming employment at Hogwarts, he asks her detailed questions about her lesson plans, they end up in a heated debate about the nuisances of certain transfiguration types. By the time the desert arrives and Malfoy orders them a bottle of wine, she has almost forgotten what they came there to do.

Holding his wine glass tight in his hand, he stares at her for a long moment. Despite Hermione being the one with the power here, she finds herself self-conciously brushing back her hair and adjust the dress she picked out for the far more posh location than she was used to.

He raises a single brow at her nervous movements before speaking.

"Nervous, Granger? I'm the one who will be baring my soul to you over these bowls of ice cream. This isn't exactly one of those exams you were so scared of failing," he says, placing his wine glass down again.

She finds herself smirking slightly at him, enjoying these good-natured barbs more than she ever enjoyed his poison filled tongue when it was sprouting slurs at her as a child.

"It isn't easy hearing the things I've heard, Malfoy. I suspect that your story will not be any different," she says honestly.

He gulps comedically loudly before nodding. Holding onto the edge of the table, he seems to prepare himself to begin. Quill and notebook floating beside their table, the two are finally ready she thinks.

I read the papers, Granger. I know what the people reading this think about me. They either think that I am secretly the spawn of the Dark Lord himself, or they are like you and Potter bleeding heart Gryffindors who think that I am a victim of a horrible childhood. This prototypical unloved child that just needed a few more hugs and would have ended up a Hufflepuff had I gotten them. That isn't true. Neither of those ridiculous notions are correct.

I am no hero, Granger, nor am I the same villain many like to claim I am. I was a child. A child who made every ignorant choice available to him until I was put into a position where I had no more choices left.

I know what you said in your testimony. That I was a boy who had no choice. In some respects you are not wrong. The whole world knows how little of a choice I had at the end. There was no choice when it came to getting branded for life by a monster who when I lay writhing on the floor screaming just covered my mouth with his bare foot to shut me up. He had stepped in my blood. I could taste it as I screamed. That wasn't a choice.

But there were choices before that I made. I chose to be proud of my heritage, of my family, and of my father. That was a choice. I chose to smirk my way through life thinking I was better than anyone else simply because of the Malfoy name and blood in me. Before you interrupt what is supposed to be my own telling of this tale Granger, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that I was taught to be that way. You are correct of course. My father taught since my earliest memories that I was in fact inherently better than everyone else because I had pure-blood and an ancient noble name.

Theodore Nott was taught the same thing by his own rather ancient father, but he did not go around yelling mudblood at you or being a general wanker to other people. He chose to look at his father even as a child and see him for the entirety of what he was. A supremacist, a death eater, a man who loved him no doubt but only loved him because he was his. I didn't do that. I made the choice to look at my father and only see what I wanted to see, to see the man who I loved and who I thought loved me no matter what he did. I didn't want to ever question that or look beyond it.

I have given lots of thought to why I ended up in Slytherin. I'm sure my father would say because it was in my blood. It was my birthright to end up in that noble house. Which I do think it is. Some of the most powerful and brilliant wizards have come out of that house, Granger, you and the bloody people reading this should remember that. But, beyond that. I think it wasn't just my blood that placed me there immediately. It was the fact that I am not creative or curious, Granger. I am no Ravenclaw. I am not someone who looks at something and questions it and wonders. I am no foolish Gryffindor who jumps head first into whatever dangerous situation comes my way. I am someone who waits. Who steps back. I am not someone who is particularly welcoming or pleasant either, as I'm sure you know. The only house for me was Slytherin. I am sure of that now.

Because of all those things I am, I didn't change at all in school. Why would I wonder why someone with supposed dirty blood was out performing me in classes? Why would I attempt to talk to people who had different backgrounds as myself? Why would I throw myself into the throngs of danger that came every year at that bloody school thanks to your lot? It wasn't who I was.

I chose to not grow as a person the way some of my other housemates and Professors did. I am no Snape with a redemption spanning decades. I am simply who I am. I was a bully. I was a horrible child. Who grew up to be caught in the very web that I chose to never break out of.

By the time I was standing in front of the Dark Lord, holding out my arm as I already cried, I had already made the bed I would lie in. The time for questioning my beliefs, my family, the world I grew up in was long gone. That is what growing up is supposed to be used for. I did not do that. So yes, I had no choice to become a Deatheater. I had no choice in letting them into Hogwarts the night Dumbledore died.

But I had choices before that, and I had choices after.

The choice to lower my wand that night. That is a choice I made. Was it one made already too late? Yes. But, I chose to do that, Granger. No one can take that away from me. I may have been a bully, I may still be an entitled ponce, but I am not a murderer. I never intend to be. That was a choice I made as person. A choice that my father had never made himself. I chose differently and from then on, I kept making these choices.

To many people, Weasley included I'm sure, my choices are not exactly heroic. I did not take on the Dark Lord himself or my Aunt. I didn't throw myself in front of you the night you were tortured. I didn't take up my wand against the people I was on the supposed side of. My choices were mostly those of inaction. I did not kill Dumbledore, but I did not save him either. I did not tell Bellatrix I knew who you were, but I did not save you from the torture you experienced. I did not pick up my wand and fight against you and Potter, but I didn't take aim at any of the other Deatheaters either. This may seem like nothing of worth to people like you and the ginger hoard you call a family I presume.

But it is something to me. It is still something to me.

We are not all victims of our circumstances, Granger. We are mostly products of our choices.

I will not be going into the sordid details of what it felt like to be 16 and essentially pushed into slavery for a monster. I will not be detailing all the lackluster moments of my childhood with my father. I will not be even discussing what it feels like to walk the streets and see mothers push their children behind them when they see me because they fear I am the next coming of the Dark Lord.

These people reading your book want to know about war? What they really should know about is what leads to a war. What creates the monsters they are fighting in the battlefield. Choices, Granger, choices. We are the ones that do this to ourselves. The story of what happened to me may scare a few snobby children into being better teenagers and adults I'm sure. But, what these people need to hear the most is that they are the ones in control of where their lives lead.

Potter did not have a loving childhood. If there was anyone in need of more hugs growing up it was him. He made choices early on in his life to grow and learn and become the fool-hearted hero he is now.

I had a mother who sacrificed nearly everything for me, who is still with me today. My father while not pleasant, loved me in his own way as well. I made my own choices that led me to where I sit now before you.

Another war in decades, in a century even perhaps, is nearly guaranteed. That is how a society works unfortunately for all us. The question is if the next time something like this comes, will we all have made the right choices? Or will we questioning what man could have been had we done things differently.

Hermione nearly chugs down her glass of wine and stares deep into her bowl of melted golden speckled ice cream when he finishes. This was nowhere near what she had expected or prepared for. She was expecting tears and tragedy. Instead she has pages full of introspection and strong-handed accountability.

The two stare at each other, empty glasses in front of them, for what seems like an hour.

"Not what you were expecting, Granger?" he says finally.

She chokes back a laugh.

"Malfoy, I won't excuse your past behaviors. You said it quite eloquently yourself, you made those choices. That being said, you shouldn't be questioning what kind of man you could have been. The man you are now is more than impressive enough," she tells him.

They shake their way through goodbyes at the end, and she nearly stumbles when as they head in opposite directions outside of the restaurant he asks her if she would like a less professional repeat of it the following week.

Her shocked nod is enough to make him smile before apparating away.

Similarly to Ron, she has a hard time naming this chapter. The Boy Who Chose. The Boy Who Changed. The Man Who Could Have Been. They all get scratched out with harsh lines of frustration.

For years many have talked about Harry and Malfoy as if they were two sides of the same coin. The Man Who Could Have Been and the Man Who Was. She finds her inspirtation there. Malfoy is not a lost cause to fall under the past tense of could. Nor is he the hero from the beginning who always was. He simply is the man today.

Her editor personally doesn't like the title or chapter itself really, but Hermione doesn't care.

War is also about the aftermath and the growth people experience from it. A chapter to highlight that is something that may be needed more than most.

---

Chapter: The Boy Who Lived

It's the last interview she conducts. It only seems proper to leave Harry's for last when it's no doubt the most wanted, the one with the strongest set of expectations on it. She knows that when people pick up her book, this one will be the one they are looking for and will probably skip forward too.

It is also the one that is the hardest to shape and edit, mainly because Harry does not make it easy for her.

They were lying on his bed, finger intertwined. In one month she would be starting her first year teaching, and they're in the moment. They have known this recounting and interview would be coming since he first encouraged her to do it. She feels like she can hear his heartbeat through the mattress, as she waits for him to start speaking.

The tension in the hand holding hers is just one of many signs that this interview will not be the carefully thought out prose that so many of those she had sat down with had done. It is going to be pure Harry, full of angst and anger.

She is flash backing to some of their worst years in school when he finally opens his mouth and begins.

I know what the world wants. They want me to lay here and bare my soul, to bare my past, to give the Rita Skeeter version of what they all think happened. They want the heroic tale and all the works. But, that's bullshit. That isn't what this is at all. That isn't what war is.

It is so much more than me or Voldemort or even Dumbledore.

It is all these people that saved us along the way. All these little things would have killed us before we even got to the Battle of Hogwarts if there hadn't been someone along the way ready to help us.

I know people don't care about that, they care about duels and battles and great loss. But- but those little things matter more than all of that.

Scrimgeour. People never mention his name. They just forget that there was a Minister before everything went to hell and after Fudge. But, he was tortured to death. He was tortured to death, and he didn't even tell Voldemort what Dumbledore had left in his will to us. That gave us an advantage that no one ever thinks about.

A man died because he kept our secrets, and he wasn't even in the Order of the Phoenix. That that is what this war was about. About things like that. About people who are just normal people, who aren't even good people, facing these horrible horrible things and choosing to help us.

Malfoy even didn't give us up in his manor. His entire family's lives were on the line, and he looked at us and said he couldn't be sure. They would have called Voldemort immediately if he had said it was us. We would have been dead. Instead we…made it out. We kept making it out because people kept doing things like that.

People think of Kinglsey as the Minister now but before that he spent hours after his regular job sitting around and strategizing, leading. It wasn't me making evacuation plans for Muggle-borns or getting supplies to safe houses. That was him. How m any people would have died if he hadn't dedicated every moment of his life to this War?

All I did was a cast a bloody first year level spell. That was nothing really when you think about it in comparison to these things.

The name Dumbledore everyone recognizes that. They think of him so quickly, but what about Aberforth Dumbledore? He brought a whole army of people in from the village to fight. That was support we desperately needed. While so many people were tucked into their beds that night, he was gathering and bringing in reinforcements.

There are just so many things Hermione that people did like that. We were all just these tiny specs in one huge story, in one huge battle.

Think about Slughorn. We all - we all said these things about Slytherins but he was fighting that night. He was leading people into battles, he was administering potions and helping heal people. That was a Slytherin doing that. But, people still are telling their kids to never be in Slytherin that it's full of nothing but dark wizards.

This war wasn't mine. It wasn't ours, Hermione. It was everyone's. It was my parents war. It was Remus' war. It was…it was Snape's war. It was Lavender Brown's war. It was Madame Pomfrey's war. It was Amelia Bones' war. It was Kreacher's war. It was Flitwick's war and the Weasley's war and Madame Rosmerta's war. It was all of our wars, living or dead now.

I know the world wants to know what it is like to be a hero. But, they don't need to wonder. We were all doing our parts to be hero's in our own way. I don't want to be known as the hero of this war. I never wanted to be.

People can say what they want and complain about how this isn't what they wanted, but I don't care. I've never cared about that stuff. This-this is real. This is what they need to know.

It was more of a rant than anything Hermione knows when he finally loses steam and his hold of her hand relaxes. She's heard this screaming and stream of consciousness before. She is sure that her editors and future readers would prefer she asks him do it again, to at the very least add to it with some regaling of what happened in the Forbidden Forest that night.

Instead, she accepts it. She barely edits it, only taking out his pauses and 'um's'. Harry is right, he encompasses what she has found in her writing of the book. That they are all just pieces of a much larger, much more tragic puzzle than they all could have imagined.

She knows the title of the chapter will be enough to get people's attention. She knows that there will be complaints, but she smiles when she sends it off in the Final Draft.

Harry will always be Harry. The world should know that enough by now.

---

In Memoriam

It is the final page of the book that ends up being the hardest for her. A long list of those killed at the hands of Voldemort either directly or on his command by others. She forces herself to look at the list again and again, to look at each name she doesn't know and to really think about the loss encompassed in the two or three words that make up their name.

Abbott, Emilie

Bagshot, Bathilda

Black, Regulus

Black, Sirius

Bode, Broderick

Bogrod

Bones, Amelia

Brown, Lavender

Burbage, Charity

Creevey, Colin

Cresswell, Dirk

Crouch Sr., Barty

Diggory, Cedric

Dobby

Dumbledore, Albus

Fortescue, Florean

Frels, Bailey

Gornuk

Gregorovitch, Mykew

Karkaroff, Igor

Lupin, Remus

Moody, Alastor

Pepper, Octavius

Scrimgeour, Rufus

Snape, Severus

Tonks, Nymphadora

Tonks, Ted

Vance, Emeline

Weasley, Fred

---

When she closes the finished book, she sighs.

The number of weeks and the number of tears it took to finish is immeasurable almost, but the joy she feels in holding it in her hands is equally so. She had grabbed a copy from a nearly empty shelf while out with Malfoy earlier in the day and holds the grey hardcover tightly in her hands. It's beautiful golden script looks up at her, filled with every moment of tragedy and hope she could manage to fit into a single book.

The Men and Women Who Won The War

By Hermione Granger

It soon becomes as classic as Hogwarts: A History much to her pleasure.

---

Author's Note:

Here's a fun fact for you. The original version of this story had a Neville/Hermione subplot. I decided to just take that out completely and leave the hints of something else elsewhere.

Anyway, this was a long one clearly, but I was fine with that.

I hope you have found something that resonated with you in this, whether it be grief in all it's different forms or the type of love you have been most grateful to have.

Personally, Pansy was my favorite.

Which interview was your favorite?

Sincerely,

NoSecretsHere