A/N – Hope you like this chapter. Please review with any comments, I do appreciate constructive criticism but not meaningless comments that don't help me at all, (Yes, I'm talking to 1 person here mainly, you know who you are) Help me make my stories better!

Disclaimer – Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, I don't own Harry Potter. If I did I'd be out shopping with all my lovely cash wouldn't I!

Chapter 2 – Big Trouble

Hermione Granger was in big trouble. BIG trouble. For the first time in her life, here in front of her, was a problem she couldn't solve. If it was anything else, she would be O.K., knowing there was an easy answer somewhere; she just had to find it. And find it she would, every time.

But not here, not now, this wasn't a situation where she could find an easy answer. For there is no easy answer to death, is there.

She was about to slump onto the coach at The Burrow, when she was enfolded in a huge hug from Ginny.

"It wasn't your fault," whispered the youngest Weasley, right in Hermione's ear, "You mustn't think that. Ever. It truly, truly, wasn't your fault. You weren't stupid, you didn't do anything wrong. There's nobody to blame except Voldemort and the death-eaters and we beat them didn't we. We showed them."

"Yes.", the word was choked out as Hermione started to cry, hard and fast into Ginny's shoulder, "But maybe if we'd have beaten them sooner or if I'd have been there… maybe… just maybe…"

She couldn't carry on as the immovable, unchangeable reality that her two best friends would never see her or speak to her again, and that – as much as everyone said otherwise - it really was her fault, hit her. If she had been there, at that final confrontation with Voldemort and the few Death-Eaters that were left, maybe she could have saved them. Ron, at least. Maybe, not Harry, for what good was she against the feared Lord Voldemort, nothing. But she could have tried; all she wanted was the chance to try.

She knew she couldn't go on any longer feeling like she had killed her best friends. But neither could she leave Ginny, without the only friend she had left, her protector, her guide. She thought hard, feeling the smaller girl's hug press into her, and knew it was the last time she would feel it. Ever.

Hermione had made her decision. She pulled free of Ginny, her tears no longer a problem, she was past crying now, there were no tears left inside her if she'd wanted to cry. The problem now was how to get out.

She worked her way around the room, hugging people, consoling people, being consoled herself, whilst saying her silent goodbyes to everyone. It was hard though, unbelievably hard. Everyone, she had ever known and loved was in this room now and she knew she would never see any of them again.

She silently slipped into the kitchen and out of the back door, taking nothing with her but the money in the pocket of her jeans; she walked to the nearest bus-stop and sat down. The first bus that came, she resolved, she would catch. She wanted to get as far away from there as possible, that much she knew.