"And what do you do? You fight?"

"Yes, Malfoy. I fight. For a better world, a better life."

"For you?"

"No."

Hermione Granger stared at the ceiling with dry eyes as she lay on her back on the hard and uncomfortable bed she had chosen. Ginny had died today. Harry had cried again. Ron had wept. Hermione had tried.

The tears wouldn't come out. They hadn't come out for Fred or Percy either. When Tonks had turned up tortured to death, she hadn't cried. Hermione's skin was tough. Too tough.

The ceiling was cracked in many places. Scars of a past Hermione didn't care to know about. What mattered was that it held. For now. She was scarred too, but she would hold. She would hold.

"You're beautiful, Granger. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you will die tomorrow?"

"I don't think about that anymore."

"What do you think about?"

The door creaked open. Harry walked into his best friend's room. His red eyes shone with tears from underneath his permanent worry lines.

"Hermione?"

Hermione sighed and turned to look at the pitiful state her friend was in. It twisted her heart, but she hardly felt it. The ball lodged in her throat had been there too long for her to notice it anymore.

"Ginny's dead, Hermione."

"I know."

"How can I go on without her, Hermione? How can I?"

"You can't. But you have to."

Harry watched as his friend's eyes glass over a bit more. She was becoming a statue, a warrior, taking down anything in her path without feeling. For weeks he and Ron had felt like they were losing her. It was only then that he realized they had lost her a long time ago.

"I thought I saw you yesterday."

"You probably did, Draco. We were at the same place."

"I thought I saw you on the ground."

"You thought I was dead?"

"I cried."

"You shouldn't."

Hermione gripped the handle of her polished wand. It was dark. The stars had faded away, leaving only the moonlight to play on her skin. During the day, it seemed a beautiful milky white, but now it seemed deathly pale. She could see the blue veins on her thin hand spindling to the rest of her arm.

Her eyes fixed the line in front. The line that separated her from life or death. When you crossed that line, your seconds were counted, and they slipped away like water. The moon looked at her, stared at her, through her. Ron reached for her hand, but thought better of it.

Hermione was not sentimental anymore. The wind blew in her hair. She counted. When she reached 0, the first flash of green light blew the earth in front of her twenty feet into the air. She didn't move.

"It's time." Whispered Moody from behind her.

"What's going to happen to us, Hermione?"

"We're going to continue."

"Continue what? Living like this?"

"I don't call it living."

"What do you call it then?"

"Existing. We need to continue existing."

Blood ran down Hermione's cheek as she took in the full blast of the Cruciatus Curse sent by Bellatrix Black. She didn't move. She didn't scream. She didn't flinch. Bellatrix stared at the girl in awe. The dark haired woman saw herself in the ruthless and cold girl that stood in front of her. She saw who she was, all that she had done.

She saw that she, who was afraid of no one, could be killed by no man, was going to be destroyed by herself. Herself in a younger body, and number heart. She smiled into Death, knowing that she wasn't exactly vanquished. She was more powerful than anyone.

It had taken herself to kill her.

And Hermione saw what she would become in Bella. She saw the glassy eyes of the pale and dead face sprawled on the earth. She saw what she was now.

"What's left now? It's all over, Hermione, and what is left? Harry died killing Voldemort, Dumbledore's dead, The Weasleys are no more. What is left for you?"

"What do you mean, Draco?"

"I'm dying too. You know that. There's nothing left for you. Nothing for you to continue existing for."

"Death is cowardly. I will not take action against myself if that's what you mean."

"You're cold. You're already dead."

"You asked what's left."

"I did."

"The pieces of our dream, Draco. It's broken, but the pieces are still there."

"Are you going to pick them up, Hermione?"

"No."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"What I've always done. I'm going to watch them fade away."