Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. In fact, I do not own anything from Harry Potter series. But I'm pretty sure you already knew that. I also don't own the lyrics.

Author's notes: Yeah, here I go (like the smart person that I am), starting another story one week before school begins. Let's ignore my lack of foresight. Anyway, the story… Yes this will be a Hermione/Remus fic, so please don't remind me of "how wrong" it is, if this weren't fanfiction I would wholeheartedly agree. This takes place after 'the war', so remember there have been deaths. This story also alludes to relationships between Hermione and Ron, and Harry and Ginny, there may be more mentioned in the future. Well, that's all, so thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll review.

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.
-Les Miserables, "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables"

...

Hermione downed her fourth shot of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey, and clumsily poured a fifth. Pondering life in its entirety, she could not help thinking how ironic everything could be.

They had won the war; Voldemort was gone forever; good had once again prevailed over evil; yet here she was utterly miserable over it all. She had lost so many friends, too many, and all in an amazingly short period of time. She had been so naïve to think that everything could be normal after it was all over, and not even this epiphany could hold back the sob that escaped her lips.

It had all started back in her fourth year when Cedric Diggory had met his untimely end. Hermione had never known the boy. She hadn't even spared a tear for him, and how could she; she had been busy worrying over Harry and that nasty reporter.

Next had been the infamous Sirius Black. He, at least, she had had the decency to cry for. His name's clear now, she thought bitterly. For a while she had even felt partly responsible for his death. If only she had been more firm with Harry. Insisted harder that what he had seen wasn't real. Maybe then she could have prevented it, but she had let herself give up that fight. It hadn't been her fault; she hadn't killed him, her logic shone through at last. However, imagining dying as he had, misjudged; secretly; abruptly; brought a new bout of tears to her eyes. Although their cause quickly changed as the fifth glass of liquid burnt at the inside of her throat like red-hot daggers. She coughed harshly and reached over for the bottle. She poured out a sixth glass, which ended up more in her lap than in her cup.

Of course there had been countless unnamed deaths, wizard and muggle alike, since the end of her fifth year. Many of them mysterious as was to be expected. But the deaths of those close to her were the worst, and there was no book on grieving that could help her to dull the pain. Books, who had been her only friends for so long had finally let her down. Her faith in them seemed destroyed along with most everything else.

Hermione swooned precariously as she thought of Ron. His death had been the hardest to bear, in ways it was even worse than her parents' death. In their seventh year they had both finally admitted their fighting had only been acts of self-preservation, in case the other didn't feel the same way. They both felt the same way though; they liked each other indefinitely, perhaps even loved. But it was all short lived.

Harry hadn't been the same since then either. He was depressed beyond belief and took to long periods of solitude, which no one found particularly surprising. Well at least he had Ginny to help him through it all. Hermione had no one, and really that was the source of all her problems: alone in the beginning, alone in the end.

Hermione put the glass to her lips, but it slipped to the floor with a dull thud on the carpet. With one last long sigh her head rolled to the side and she fell asleep.