Some Stars Stand Alone
Laying on her back in the cool, dewy grass Hermione could see every star straight to the horizon. It was one of those perfectly clear nights that stretched on forever if you let it.
She was free and able to enjoy it properly. Ron was laying next to her, enjoying this stolen moment together in the dead of night to watch the stars like young lovers too afraid to touch.
"It's nice to see that every star has another star you can connect it to," he said, tracing the lines between tiny sparks of light set in the sky like a giant ferroniere for the Queen of Heaven.
"That's not true," Hermione answered coolly, ignoring the romance of the moment. "Some stars stand alone."
She was thinking about Neville again. The whole ordeal was so entirely unjust.
Justice had to be served. A crime was committed; it needed to be rectified with a punishment. It made sense, but under the present circumstances the logic failed to make it right.
Bellatrix deserved to die and who better to kill her than Neville. He had suffered the most out of all her victims. It was only fitting that he should be the one to end her tirade of agony.
The judicial system didn't look at it that way.
She had tried to visit him several times, but as she was family they wouldn't let her. His only family left was his Gran and she was too old and frail to go to Azkaban for visits. It was a very accurate picture to paint Neville standing alone in his cell for hours on end.
No one would come to visit him and no one would know his fate until seven years' time was over.
His future looked bleak from this angle and only seven years would prove whether or not he was brave enough to stand through it all.
Hermione looked up to a tiny star resting on the horizon all by itself. It set quietly into the blue-black mountains. She made a wish on that star just before it disappeared from the night. She turned to Ron and held him tightly to her, the one real thing she could hold on this lonely night.
