Epilogue: From the Diary of Hermione Granger - Year 5

Tie-ups:

* The Gryffindor mole who was giving the Society for Purity such entrance into the Tower, which also caused Hermione all that extra misery, was Candy Designer/Whitehall, bitter because of her rather abrupt ejection from the first-string G. Quidditch team. (Remember that Hermione found her crying in the corridors that one night.)

* Alyn, the Bulgarian who had so abruptly cut off his contact with Hermione, had been one captured by Death Eaters and made a werewolf after he and some friends were coming home slightly intoxicated from a Quidditch game. He survived the year and the climax where he was used as a DE weapon and was returned to his distraught family, considerably more somber and serious a man than he had been before.

* If you recall the ripple in the Ministry, when a mysterious figure tried to tell the Ministry what was happening, that was Alyn, who had made a brave escape only to be re-captured (and probably tortured a bit).

* The enigmatic John? In Alyn's position, only a Muggle beforehand, which probably led to his considerably greater insanity. He was working on a thesis paper in Romania when captured and contacted not only the Trio and Ginny but also Charlie at one point.

* Yes, yes, Gryffindor won the Quidditch cup. (However, in my universe they lost in the sixth year, leaving Harry something new to angst about -- maybe he simply isn't a good captain?)

* Hermione and Ron end the year single. That's good news for the H/R fans, non? And the rest of you are still free to pair them up in your mind with whomever you wish.

* Voldemort kills quite a few Hibilitians, while binding the rest irrovacably to him, the night of our climax (see below). This convinces quite a few people not to join him.

* Josie Chance and Charlie become a Couple (was there ever any doubt?)

* Cho and Neville remain Friends/Couple. BTW, since I'll never get time to write out the romance for you, they met while Cho was in St Mungo's under observation for doing something rather bizarre (staying outside during a nightful of rain, presumably post-traumatic stress due to Cedric's death.) Neville meets her while visiting his parents.

* Yes, yes, while we're on it, Sara and George also remain a couple. (This sugary romance stuff is killing me to write out so prosaically.) When Remus and Sirius find this out, Sirius opinions that its simply poetic justice for Sara's uncle (if, you recall, Remus) for their own prankster days and resign themselves to a rather noisy courtship.

* While we're on both romance and our favourite Marauders, let's clarify several points. Nicole Skylark is - you guessed it - Linda Fairchild. She and Remus do not start a romance. The Seer mentioned at the CC meeting is not Trelawney (come on, does she even count?) Rather, Elizabeth Turpin is one who is actually of some use, also a rather bitter and disagreeable woman. She and Sirius do get together, after some clashing.

* Hopefully last pairing - eventual Percy/Penelope. Both have a lot of maturing to do, which brings us about to Percy's very strange behaviour over the course of the story. One minor detail: Percy was flustered when his brothers asked why he brought them over for Christmas hols and left behind their friends because he hadn't thought of it. And felt badly for it.

* The late and possibly-great plot twist for this involved sneaking in a scene shortly after Percy's job with Crouch where the Weasley most respectability-conscious also receives a werewolf bite (what can I say? There nasty folks are active right now.) It worked wonders for a fic half-finished wherein Percy does his best to hide this fact. It comes out, however, after the climax (see below, again), which, in addition to Percy! characterisation, was a great excuse for a trial scene - although, since Percy didn't get to say much, wasn't that much of a trial, but at least he was acquitted - and lots of Weasley air time, something this story had way too little of.

* Penelope was busy finding evidence in the Black case, and finding very little that incriminated him. In Jobeyfanon! Book Seven, she helps acquit Sirius.

* This was one of the funniest-planned scenes for the book. After the emergency is over and Drothl returns to the Defence post, the children are nearly in tears. This lasts until after the climax and a few days before summer break, wherein Hermione's class lets in the clueless and antisocial, antimedia Drothl in on the DADA Jinx. She's so infuriated (and superstitious) that she promptly abandons the class (which is highly pleased with themselves), confronts Dumbledore, and announces her intention to leave for the next year, to the great joy of the studentry at large.

* Jobeyfanon! Book Six sees the arrival of Griff Rethfy, the annoying comedian mentioned in Serendipity. It's another quite useless year, although the extremely irritating Rethfy proves himself, at least to a degree, in the crisis that Harry and Draco face in one of the secret passageways against an experimentally bred (but not by Hagrid, for once) monster.

* However, Rethfy is more than happy to leave after that year, and finally, having absolutely no one left, Snape finally takes over Defence, breaking the "curse" by staying there for ten years straight (although his life has some close shaves as Voldemort grows ever more suspicious of him). His classes are as effective and intolerable as ever, which is to say, both adjectives in great degree, although the new Potions mistress never manages to satisfy him, and she's pleased to leave after four years of his criticisms. Someone more thick-skinned replaces her.

* Hermione comes to truces with a lot of things by the end of the book, including her ties between the two worlds, the war, Quidditch, and the fact that she is not exempt to the rest of the world in having hormones. Also some people. She waves sunnily at Cassandra Nott when the train pulls into Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters. She and Chelsea keep up a correspondence, if never a close friendship. She and Ginny work together during the climax rather than face death (and Ginny helps with the broomstick -- see below, remember?) After this, a truce is called rather tacitly and all is well. And she and Sara come to terms with the fact that they're just not the two who will ever get along peaceably, but that they can at least coexist in comfortable rivalry. Hermione gives Sara a diary before they leave for hols, hoping that it will "calm her down". (Sara makes an agreement with herself not to write in it, but breaks her vow in general boredom over summer, which sound have leave to this story's sequel. And Hermione was right about the "calm her down" and "maturity" via diary bit.)

* One important note before moving on to a summary of the climax night is that Remus gave lessons to students who so requested on resisting Climatics and Crutiacus, which proved plenty useful during the climax.

Climax:

Yes, the Trio lives, even through the climax, which was an action-filled and and daring-filled scene where a battle erupts at Hogsmeade.

Hermione was over there in the first flimsy place because Sirius caught wind of something wrong. He requested for Hermione to attempt to brew Wolfsbane Potion for Remus, as both were in hiding at Hogsmeade and, if the situation really did go out of control, that much would be taken care of. Hermione, being the prodigy she is, managed it.

Harry was with her that particular evening. Ron was not told of plans but had followed them in hopes of knowing what was up.

Flimsy as this is, a great portion of Hogwarts wound up at Hogsmeade anyway. The secret passageway from Honeydukes to the one-eyed witch was exposed by Death Eaters (because of course at least one of their number knew about it). This magic caused a two-way street: Hogsmeade knew of it, but when a double attack occurred at Hogwarts, exploding the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff sections of the castle, they all saw the passageway highlighted in all but neon light as well.

One of the casualties was Seamus Finnigan (for once even I was sad at a character's death). A big number's worth of others also died.

The reason for so much destruction was because, while Voldemort was hunting down particularly prey, the Death Eaters occupied everyone else with their troupe of dark creatures. Some willing, some not. Amongst the unwilling was John, the mysterious contact in Diagon Alley, who died somewhat as a mercy to his miserable, insane state.

Anna, Hermione's vampric friend, had an immunity to many of the Death Eaters' attempts to restrain her due to her two vampire bites. Thus she was able to keep in contact with the DE's dark creatures, so long as the Light Side didn't capture her and put her firmly back in custody.

Hermione, Dumbledore, and others tried to persuade Anna to stay at Hogwarts, but Anna insisted on remaining for others the DE's might vicitimise in similar ways.

Whew. *wipes forehead on hand* This makes little or no sense.

For once, Harry was spared meeting Voldemort. Ron and Ginny did it for him and refused to say much to either Harry or Hermione about it. Traumatic as this was, being in Voldemort's safehold during the confusion might've saved their lives and/or humanity.

Contrary to accusations made at the trial, Percy was nowhere near Hogsmeade that night; instead Penelope was manning the Floo Network and paperwork for the confusion in his name in disguise. The disguise wasn't all that great, which led to Percy's newfound lycanthropy to be discovered by the Ministry in the first place.

Hermione has a chance to attempt flying during the battle, and manages well enough to save her neck and Lisa Turpin's, if nothing else.

Oh, and this isn't a climax note, but yes, she does commentate the next year.

If there is any point you were interested that I neglected to mention (for I'm sure I forgot a few things), then leave a review/and or email me, and I'll reply to you and add it to this summary.

Hope I'm not leaving anyone in suspense.

A/N: To all of my dear readers,

You've all made me feel incredibly guilty, considering the high amount of praise and support for this story. That and my own standards and ambitions (I suppose there's a dash of Slytherin in me) made it very difficult to cut my ties.

Unfortunately, if we needed one more nail, it's the Fifth Book itself this weekend.

And quite frankly, I've begun to loathe and dread this story. In all honesty, I think my writing here is rather horrible, although as always I'm glad for what I learned while writing this and for how I managed to entertain my readers, which always makes for warm-and-fuzzy feelings.

I'm going on a maudlin vein now, so you can skip the next few paragraphs if you wish.

I can remember the first day I started this story. I must've been in seventh grade (I'm going into my sophomore year of high school - for you Brits, that means roughly four years ago). I was in my Mom's black Chevy, and her, my stepdad, and my brother were going to Julianno's, an favourite Italian resturant of ours. My youngest brother, Austin James, was not yet born (but yes, when we were looking for middle names that began with "J" for the excuse of calling him A.J., my reasons for suggesting James were heavily grounded in HP).

I had this basic idea for happenings in fifth year for some time, but writing the story in regular prose always left me frustrated. The idea of doing it in diary format was lightening-storm-type inspiration. Immediately I pulled out the cheap red binder full of looseleaf I used to carry with me (before A.J. was born and I left the binder at home in favour of carrying him.) I had a pencil that I vowed to use only for Extracts from the Diary of Hermione Granger -- Year 5.

This underwent a change in title once I posted it on ff.net, and I've since lost that pencil, and have probably used it for other mundane things like homework.

Originally this was a team of stories - Hermione told fifth year via diary, and Lily would tell her fifth year via letters to a best Muggle friend named Harry (that never quite came through).

There were also supposed to be the aforementioned sequels, which will never come to pass. However! -- *hurriedly, before the readers turn muntinous* -- I do have an idea for this universe that I will, indeed, attempt to write. It features four students after this generation defeats Voldemort, a motley crew of a Slytherin, a Hufflepuff, and two Gryffindors. One is a Weasley, one is a Malfoy, one is an poet, and one is a werewolf.

I can swear to you that no matter what characterisations popped into your head at seeing each of those words, you're quite likely wrong. The Weasley is not in Gryffindor; the Slytherin is not in Slytherin. The poet, shockingly, is a Gryffindor (will wonders never cease? an introspective, poetic Gryffie?). The Slytherin werewolf has about as much self-control as a tornado - and does not understand the value of shutting your mouth when faced by an irritable Headmaster Snape.

It's turning out to be a pretty fun story, even if largely plotless. And you'll have to review and specifially request not to be put on my Author Alert list -- if not, I'll be sending an Alert to all my reviewers of HG5 when I post that fic, tentatively titled Parts of a Greater Sum.

On this note I hope we can all bid farewell to HG5 will a little more contentment and a little less murderous thoughts toward yours truly.

Chocolate Frogs and good!fic to all,

Jobey

(who has, in fact, written other stories on this profile and at

http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=187936

and isn't afraid to self-plug 'em)