In the years since the downfall of Voldemort, much had taken place. The Death Eaters that had survived the war had been placed before the Wizengamot and sent off to Azkaban for as long as they should live. The Order members that were lost were being recognized on what was to be known as "The Wall." It was a large marble wall sectioning off a large portion of the field where Dumbledore's tomb was, the part of the field where Voldemort had taken his last breath. The wall held the names, birthdates and deathdates of the Order Members and non-Death Eaters that had died throughout the war and most especially in the last grand effort which ended the war for good.
The Golden Trio used to walk the perimeter of the school every year of the anniversary of the battle, seating themselves on a bench that had been erected for visiting war heroes. They sat for a long while most times, each reflecting silently. Generally, the peace was broken up by a scarred and one-armed Ron saying he was famished and that they should head to the kitchens while they were there. Harry, who had grown more subdued each year after Dumbledore's death always sighed and agreed to accompany Ron. Hermione Jane Granger, every time nodded for them to go on as she sat in her crisp robes, hands folded in her lap while her ankles crossed beneath her.
She looked straight ahead but still saw nothing. If anyone had become more distant than Harry, it was Hermione. The war had effected her in ways that it was hard for anybody but Harry to understand and the two could never bring themselves to speak on it. In fact, Hermione and Harry tried to stay apart from one another. They only saw one another at Christmas at the Burrow. These yearly visits were becoming more and more of a strain. Hermione wanted to feel the loss of her friendship with the boys, her first friends in this new world so long ago, but she couldn't. She couldn't feel anything.
She came here every day, although she would never say as much to anyone. The only one who knew of her trips was Headmistress McGonogal and that was only because Hermione's trips tended to come after classes were completed and she stayed seated on the bench through dinner. At first, Minerva and the staff had been worried and had gone looking for her. Now she was used to Hermione's trips and knew that the girl was safe on the grounds of the school. All Minerva could do was watch as her young Potion's Professor continued to fight the war within herself. Minerva couldn't even say anything to Hermione about the depression she seemed to be in because Hermione's students were all doing their work and getting good results for their NEWTs and OWLs, she was attending to her hall duties and detentions. Hermione was doing nothing that Minerva could comment on and so she stayed closed lipped to all but Albus's portrait.
On this day in particular, as it was an anniversary and not just a daily trip, Hermione had no classes to attend. She had no essays to mark or extra tutoring to do. Hermione had all day to sit and reflect and that is what she would do. She switched her crossed ankles every once in a while and pulled her hair back behind her ears if the breeze blew it in her face. She mused that with The Wall there shouldn't be a breeze but for the four foot gap that served as an entrance so many yards away. She stood slowly and took the ten steps to the tomb of Albus Dumbledore, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She laid her left hand on the tomb as her right wound it's way up to clasp her necklace. The necklace was a replica Time-Turner that reminded her of better days when all she had to think about was studying- that and saving a convict and a dangerous beast at Albus Dumbledore's twinkly-eyed hinting.
The tomb felt surprisingly warm for this time of day. She sighed once more and shook her head, stepping back and thinking how silly it was to wish for Dumbledore to pop out of the tomb and say he never really died. She wished, as she did daily, that she had a real time turner and could make things turn out the way that she wished they had. She sometimes thought that maybe someday when she was up to it she'd try and go back to when Riddle was in school and persuade him not to be an evil megalomaniac. She nearly smiled at the thought… as if that would ever happen. She knew she'd never break the law in such a way and that even if she did attempt it that it wouldn't change a thing and another Loony would step up and take his place in history. Thoughts on that track, she walked her familiar path around the wall, looking at it without seeing the names. She knew who was where on this wall. She knew where the artists had engraved the scene of Harry standing victorious between herself and Ron with McGonogal and others in the background. She always stopped in front of that engraving. She wanted to deface it somehow. To explain to everyone that that's not how it was. To scream that that's not how it was at all. She knew nobody would hear her anyways.
Nobody wanted to hear that Ron was bleeding internally several yards away from where Harry had stood dueling Voldemort. Nobody wanted to hear that Hermione had just killed Bellatrix Lestrange, who had died mid-maniacal shriek after Crucio-ing Neville to death, and countless others before that. Nobody wanted to hear how she'd stumbled over Ginny Weasley's corpse trying to get to Harry when it had happened. When Harry killed Voldemort he wasn't laughing between Hermione and Ron, as depicted. Harry was laying in a pool of his own blood. Everybody in a fifty yard radius has been knocked to the ground. Hermione crawled until she could walk, walked until she could run and collapsed as soon as she got to Harry. She checked his vitals to ascertain that he was still alive before casting a few spells they'd all learned before they'd been allowed to return home after the horrifying end of their sixth year. She made him weightless and carried him like a baby, running as fast as she could behind the barricade and into the school. Madame Pomfrey had been set up in the Great Hall and it was there that Hermione brought Harry. He was barely breathing let alone standing and smiling and laughing. It was not the happy day depicted in the engraving at all. It had been nearly an hour before Hermione had found Ron. He was in a very bad way when he was found. The Death Eaters had known they were not going on to victory and began fighting with much more vigor. It was all over about an hour and a half after Voldemort had fallen, ten yards from Dumbledore's tomb.
Why would they want people to come here and remember that? They wouldn't and it infuriated Hermione. She wondered how the Ministry really expected people to come here and read all these names from the first and second Voldemort Wars and expect that they died prettily. Perhaps people would come here one day and not even know that the names on The Wall were those of the fallen. Perhaps they'd think those were just names. All they were to those that didn't know them were names. They weren't people one had grown up with just to see meet their gruesome end at the school where they'd come to know one another in the first place. Nobody could understand this. Nobody would ever even want to. Sometimes Hermione felt that Dumbledore was lucky to have been killed when he had. It would have broken him as it had broken her to see what had been seen. Tracking down and destroying the Horcruxes was enough for Hermione to wish she'd been a muggle all along. If she'd never come to this school she'd be living happily ever after, married to some muggle and living in a house in the same neighborhood as her parents. Ah, her parents… the ones that would still be alive if she'd been a muggle and not a witch. She was a broken woman who woke up every day to go through the motions and wonder how she had made it when so many vibrant and worthwhile people were buried somewhere to be remembered by nobody but mere shells of people.
"You're a very morbid girl, Miss Granger." A voice spoke from somewhere behind her. Her hands formed fists as she connected the voice with a face. She slowly turned around to face the speaker.
"It's Professor Granger now and I ask you kindly to refrain from invading my mind. It's the only thing I have left. Good day, sir." And she started walking along her path once more towards the exit.
"I did no such thing. I came to drop something off for Albus and I find you hear speaking to yourself. If I didn't know any better I'd think of taking you to St. Mungo's."
"I-" She stopped walking. Had she been speaking out loud? "Perhaps I do belong in St. Mungo's. I'm sorry to have interrupted your visit. I'll be getting back to the school now, Professor. Good day."
"Professor Granger, it is not a good day and, as you teach the subject that associated me to you as 'professor', you should not refer to me as such." He said as he dropped a small letter onto Dumbledore's tomb which then burst into blue flames and disappeared. He closed the gap between them and offered his arm. "You do not belong in St. Mungo's, you belong indoors. Allow me to accompany you. I trust you know your way but I share your destination."
She didn't have it in her to say no so she nodded and placed a hand on his arm. As they strolled she reflected on how the war had effected the man walking her up the path to the school. He had been through more than she had, spying through both of the wars while she was on the front lines of only one of them, and yet he still showed his face in public. He had been bound through two unbreakable vows, one to Narcissa and one to Albus himself, to kill Albus Dumbledore. He kept the Order up to par through Albus' portraits as much as it had pained him to see the man post-mortem. He was at the final effort and was cleared of all charges a few weeks after, thanks to Albus's portrait, his memoirs, and his portrait persuading Minerva McGonogal of the truth of the matter.
"I haven't seen you since your trial, sir. How have you been getting on?" Hermione said quietly, disrupting their silence.
"I get on well. I've been doing a bit of research. Albus tells me I should take an apprentice because there aren't nearly enough top quality Potions Masters and Mistresses in the world. I've been thinking on it but you know how well my lessons get through to dunderheads. I have work to be done now and cannot waste forever and a day trying to get the same lesson through a thick skull." He spoke just as quietly as she had when she'd addressed him. They had never truly had a conversation. After his trial she had offered to escort him home as her parents lived the next town over from his home. He'd been snappy and refused but she would not be turned down. She'd invited herself in, sat him down on his own couch and had a talk with him that was rather one sided and didn't quite count as a conversation. It was the I'm-sorry-for-everything-I've-done-to-you speech over tea that she had conjured, a shake of the hands followed by the pop of her apparition.
"I know what you mean." She started, "I have a few students in each level that either do not pay attention or simply cannot retain the information. I don't even know why I continue trying to get through to them. I take my own time trying to impress upon them the importance of potions skills and they just don't get it. Even if they never handle another cauldron once they leave this school it's at least important that they don't hurt themselves or others while they're still here and they don't want to be bothered learning even the basics. I know where one facet of your mood during our schooldays came from. I was very… well, not nice, shall we say, during my first year or two teaching here and they started rumblings of the curse of the dungeon, imperio by Snape, and even took to calling me the black bat of the dungeons! None of them had gone to school with me or were more than first or second years in my last year there but really… They are just so- ugh, I can't even think of an adjective."
"Childish, I think suits the situation well. I was called names my entire life. Even after I attained the rank of Master and became a professor I was still called names. Unlike you, several of the students remembered seeing me around and how I was treated and continued trying to treat me in such a manner. I got nastier than I already was and when everything happened I just couldn't come back. Minerva asked me to when Albus's portrait sorted things out, I just couldn't. I don't really know how I kept myself here so many years. Independent research and contracting is much more satisfying." He was being very open with her but for once in his life he didn't feel the need to guard himself. She was the only person in his entire life who had apologized and meant it. He had seen that she meant it. She had apologized for even being scared of him at her sorting feast and everything after that, even certain things he hadn't know about. That had somewhat endeared her to him. Perhaps after one one-sided conversation and this conversation he could put her on an even platform and remove her from his mental category of ex-student. She'd never been a dunderhead but there'd always been something about her that always set them at odds and it wasn't their house statuses.
"I know exactly what keeps me here… Minerva. She asked me here as a personal favor and I stay for her. If she ever freed me I would be happy. I am not entirely obliged to stay for I have nowhere else to be but it's no good for me here. I'm close to Albus here and I'm close to it all but I'm starting to think that may not be making it better. It hasn't yet." She said. She closed her eyes and opened them once more as he laid a hand on hers, which was resting on his arm. They had reached the foot of the entry stairs.
"It will never get better. It will always be as you remember it, nothing more and nothing less. Removing the memories will do as little good and living in them. You just have to live life now and keep going. Nothing will bring back the fallen and nothing will give sense to the world. Private prisons are the worst, Professor Granger. You don't want to actually turn into the black bat of Hogwarts do you?" His tone was serious all up to his last sentence. With that last sentence he smirked and she looked up at him from the stairs.
"I never wear black anyways. My teaching robes are, laughably, emerald green hand-me downs from Minerva. She dons black now." She offered him a small, sad smile and started taking small steps up the stairs. When she didn't hear his accompanying footfalls she turned on the stairs to see him still standing at the bottom. She gave him a look that clearly stated the unasked question.
"My presence here is no longer required. My trip to the castle was as factual as your parent's living the next town over from my own- especially considering that their names were being engraved on the Muggle portion of The Wall around that time. My business here was complete with my stop at the memorial." He said truthfully, noting her confusion. "You once accompanied me somewhere when I wished nothing but solitude. You showed me that there is such a thing as sincerity. If all those people from the trial had come in a body and spat at me in that moment you would have turned them out of the room and probably have given them a nasty hex for the trouble of it. And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me what then would you have done, Professor Granger?"
"I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it. Why should I? You had been cleared of all charges and had more than proved yourself as Dumbledore's man. You proved yourself more worthy than any other during both wars in the face of adversity. You more than any other deserve my adherence just as you seemingly are the only person in the whole of my sphere to think enough of me to adhere to me in my sad state. I live under a stormy cloud constantly and not a one can see beyond the storm." She said stepping down a few steps.
"Then, you could dare censure for my sake?" He asked quirking an eyebrow questioningly. He was surely pushing the bounds of their new whatever it was. Was it friendship? He would know when this conversation came to an end. He had to know.
"I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do." She said without hesitating and brought her eyes to his before looking quickly back to the ground. He took her hand in his own once more and gave it a squeeze.
"I am glad to hear it although I think that you may think too much of me, my little friend." He lifted her face to look at him, "You shall overcome your stormy cloud Professor Granger. Get yourself inside and eat something for goodness sakes." With that he gave her small hand another quick squeeze and billowed all the way to the apparition point beyond the gate.
Professor Hermione Jane Granger stood there until she saw him disappear. Then she went inside and went to her rooms. She sat at the desk that had once belonged to the man with whom she'd just parted, her friend. Could he be her friend after everything they'd been through? Yes. Obviously he could. He seemed to understand what she was going through and did not avoid her because of it. Perhaps she wasn't as foolish as she had thought herself going out of her way to apologize to him years before. He was the only one now who could converse with her. Her visits to the burrow and with the boys to The Wall were always spent in awkward silence. It actually cheered her a bit to have contact with an actual human being, even if it was the infamous Potions Master Severus Snape, Order of Merlin third class. She shook her head and looked over her schedule for the next day.
Snape had been right… it will always be as she remembered it. She can't change the past. What happened happened and all she can do now is deal with it. All she had to do now was figure out how one goes about dealing with the loss of one's innocence, the death of one's friends, and facing the reality of war on the front lines as a teenager. Deal with it. Get over it. Those six words were harder for her to figure out than any arithmancy problem. She knew she could never get over it but perhaps she could deal with it. She killed people and saw her friends drop dead right next to her. She saw curses hit this one and that one and skip her. What made her so lucky? Why did she live through it?