When I'm Falling I'm at Peace

By ThatRomantic

Warnings: Off screen character death, Grief, EWE, Lemons

A/N: Please mind the warnings on this fic. Grief is a very strong theme in this work, and given current climate I understand that this might not be for everyone right now. I would like to thank ninamaria429 for alpha and beta'ing this for me unexpectedly when a plot bunny would not go away. The song that inspired the chapter title is Falling from Florence + the Machine's debut album.

Hermione's least favourite thing about grief was the buzzing. The buzzing that was constantly held between her chest and throat that simultaneously kept her awake until the wee hours of the morning and the very dark bags under her eyes. The buzzing that made her move through the world in autopilot: wake up, eat, work, sleep, repeat.

Rolling over in bed she caught a whiff of his pillow. It still smelled like him. Freshly mown grass, new parchment, spearmint toothpaste and something that was distinctly her husband. She buried her head in the soft cotton and feathers and took a deep breath while tears slowly rolled down her cheeks as she sobbed quietly. This had become a ritual each morning before she turned to face the day. With one last inhale so that her senses were overwhelmed with everything Ron Weasley. She rolled back over to her side, wiped her tears, and moved into the ensuite to wash her face with cool water to reduce the puffiness around her eyes.

Hermione sighed. It was not lost on her that not only had her husband survived the war, but also his brief stint as an Auror immediately after the war, only to be killed by something that they had never considered existed. With one last look at herself in the mirror and attempted to smooth down the frizz that had sprung up over the last few days and made her way downstairs where she found she had company.

"Hermione, this has to stop." Her best friend was looking at her with concern as she had books and papers strewn around the kitchen table. On the wall was a picture of Ron, along with three other people and notes below each photograph. Harry Potter removed his glasses from his face and cleaned them with the corner of his t-shirt before replacing them on his face, arguably dirtier than before. When he looked up at the curly haired witch in front of him, he ran his hand through his messy black hair. Both these actions were an indication of how concerned he was about the woman he considered to be a sister long before anyone had married.

"I can't, I have to find out what killed him. You said it yourself, it wasn't natural but it was nothing like the things we have seen before. I have been tracking similar cases and it seems that Ron wasn't the only one to have died like that. The others were muggles, around the same time but then the trail disappeared so I have managed to track them to America. I've been in contact with MACUSA and they didn't know about it because the victims over there are muggles too."

"This won't bring him back, Hermione. You know that."

"Of course I do," she snapped at him, before taking a calming breath. "I know that, but it's like when we were in school. I need answers. I feel so helpless sitting here in the house by myself. This is the only thing getting me up in the mornings."

Harry sighed and cleaned his glasses again. "Okay," he said eventually, "but, please, just come back to us soon. Between your research and Ginny's baking…" he paused, "we need you back, Hermione." She nodded to him, and he smiled back before stepping over the masses of papers and giving her a small hug.

"Love you, Harry," she said.

"Love you too," he replied before apparating back to his grieving wife.

Hermione decided that she would not mention the fact that she had already arranged for a portkey to take her to America the following week.

"Son of a bitch."

Tonight was not Dean Winchester's night. This latest hunt was one of the toughest they had faced in a while. Well, if you discounted the whole angels, and demons, and Lucifer thing. If you counted those things, this should have been the easiest thing in the world. Run of the mill, even.

But no. Why would he have such luck?

He had told Sammy to head back to the motel for the night and that he just wanted to swing by the crime scene of the latest victim to double check something. Rookie error. Now he was sat behind an upturned sofa, gun in one hand, waiting for the big nasty to attack. As if on cue, he heard a crash from behind him followed by a woman's voice that was nothing like the Vetalas he was hunting. For the love of God, he thought, sending his bright green eyes skyward. Almost immediately after he had done so, a jet of bright yellow light zoomed past his hand.

"Son of a bitch!" he exclaimed, jumping up from his spot on the floor and steadying his gun in a defensive stance. As he made his way through the living room door and turned the corner to the kitchen he saw something that he had never witnessed before.

A woman, about his age, stood in a similar pose to him facing the Vetala in front of her. Her chestnut brown curls were wild around her shoulders, almost sparking with energy. She was dressed in black fitted t-shirt and over her shoulders she wore a black leather jacket that looked like it could have been a man's. Her legs were clad in black skinny jeans with a holster around her thigh that had a jagged single knife strapped to it. Outstretched in her hand was a stick that she was wielding like a knife. Her dark eyes were narrowed at the monster, which for its part looked terrified. The look on the vicious monster's face was the only thing stopping Dean from interrupting the scene.

"Sectumsempra argenti," the woman spat and to Dean's amazement, slashes appeared on the Vetala, silver oozing from the wounds. "That was for my husband," the woman hissed before walking over to the dead body, brandishing the knife from the holster and plunging it into its heart with a twist, "you monster," she finished before standing. She turned and spotted Dean, whose gun was still pointed in her direction, and pointed her stick back at him. As if that snapped him out of his momentary shock, his grip on his gun tightened and he realigned his aim.

"Listen, lady, I don't know who you are," he started, "and thanks for killing that thing, makes my job a hell of a lot easier, but I'm going to need a real good explanation of why I shouldn't put a bullet between your eyes."

"Bugger," she said, and it was only then that Dean noticed that her accent was British, "Expelliarmus," she said and his gun flew into her outstretched hand. "I'm sorry, but I promised the MACUSA there would be no witnesses so I'm going to have to modify how you remember things a little." At this, Dean's eyes went wide in fear and he sent a silent hope skyward once again.

Just then, he heard the fluttering of wings and knew that Castiel had arrived which seemed to distract the woman long enough to make her pause, but not drop her arm.

"Dean, you called, what-" he started before spotting the woman, who for her part did not seem to flinch at the sudden appearance of the angel. "Hermione?"

"Cas… Castiel?" the woman whispered in shock, eyes wide and suddenly full of tears. "Where have you been?" she asked. "You promised, you promised I would… that… He died. I prayed to you and you weren't there!"

Dean looked between the two people in front of him in bewilderment and at Castiel's soft expression his eyebrows rose in shock.

"I'm sorry," was all the angel said. "Ron was a good man."

"Yes," she replied softly, pulling the jacket she was wearing around her body a little tighter. "Castiel, what are you doing here? It's not because of me," the woman, Hermione, said.

"Dean here is my charge and I sensed he may be in trouble."

A frown appears between the woman's brows then, an expression between sadness and betrayal. "I guess you must have new warriors to protect these days," she says so softly it's almost inaudible.

"Could someone please explain what is going on here?" Dean eventually said. "Cas, this chick just took out that scum" he said pointing at the Vetala that was now bleeding out on the kitchen tiles next to Hermione's combat boot clad feet, "with that wooden pointy… thing ,and now she's talking about memory rearrangement."

"It's a wand, you dolt," Hermione said exasperated.

"Whatever. Point still stands," he scoffed, "I don't want my brains to be scrambled eggs, thank you!"

"Oh, Hermione," Cas said as if finally realising what was about to happen, "there's no need to Obliviate Dean. He deals with these things a lot. He won't reveal anything."

Hermione looked over at the angel fully then, having barely looked away from Dean the entire time. She must have seen something in his face that made her hesitate in her actions."Okay," Hermione conceded, though rather reluctantly, and lowered her wand. "I'll give this," she lifted the gun in her hand, "back if you promise not to shoot me."

"He does," Cas answered.

"I do?" Dean looked suspiciously at Castiel who simply looked at Dean with a look in his blue eyes that made him back down. He wondered who this woman was to his companion, then remembered her words from moments before about protecting warriors. There was something about her that Dean recognised. She looked like she was around the same age as him, but the look in her dark brown eyes reminded her of something he had seen in his Dad all of his life. In Sammy after Jess died. In the mirror after returning from Hell.

"Very well," she said, handing the gun over for him to return to the holster on his belt.

Before she could disappear Castiel spoke, "Hermione, wait. I'm sure you're hungry. Let's go somewhere and eat."

She looked at him incredulously, "You don't eat." The angel simply shrugged and started walking toward the door, stepping over the dead body and debris as he went.

Looking around the bright fluorescent lights of the all night diner, Hermione could not help but think it looked like what British people expect an American diner to look like. She sat in a booth that had benches of bright red leather. The table was a plank of chipped white plastic that was fixed to the ground by a curve chrome stand. The waitress that had taken their order had a silver perm that belonged to the era Hermione had been born in and the stench of cigarette smoke clung to the woman's salmon pink uniform.

When looking over the laminated menu she had been presented with, she felt Castiel's eyes on her, his head cocked. He seemed to be assessing her general health. She had forgotten how uncomfortable it could be in his presence.

"You seem malnourished," he said, seemingly from nowhere. She dismissed the comment, knowing that this was his nature. His way of showing concern.

Without looking up from the menu she calmly states, "Yes, well, I sometimes forget the need to eat." The angel frowned and looked more concerned than before.

"Why would you forget to eat?" Castiel asked, pulling her away from her evaluation of the other man.

"Since Ron, I haven't had much of a want to cook," she answered. "I never ate as much as he did." She smiled softly thinking about that. What she would give to see him stuff his face like an animal again.

"What brings you Stateside then, Sabrina?" Dean asked, breaking her out of her thoughts. It was not until he spoke that Hermione took in the man across from her. He sat with both arms on the back of the bench, one foot resting on his knee. Even through her grief stricken haze, she could admit that he was handsome. He was dressed in a leather jacket over a dark green flannel plaid shirt and navy t-shirt and dark blue jeans with heavy brown boots on his feet. His sandy coloured hair was styled up and to the side in the front, with short back and sides. His bone structure looked like something that Michelangelo would have carved, and his lips were so full it was almost sinful. His bright, forest green eyes, which seemed to be doing a similar assessment of her appearance, were wide and framed by dark lashes.

Hermione scoffed at the nickname, "I was tracking the thing that killed my husband," she replied.

He nodded in understanding and something like respect flickered in his green orbs, "Fair enough." At her confession, Castiel seemed like he was going to ask her something.

"Why were you there?" she asked before the angel could speak.

"It's kinda my job to track the things that go bump in the night," he replied, a slight smirk on his face.

Hermione nodded in understanding. The waitress came over and placed the soup she had ordered in front of her. She picked up her spoon and swirled it around the warm liquid a little but did not make a move to eat. "I know a thing or two about things that go bump in the night," she said eventually.

"Yeah, from what I saw, it didn't look like that was your first rodeo," Dean replied before taking a generous bite out of his burger. She smiled at the action. Maybe this was Castiel's way of granting her wish to see Ron's terrible table manners from moments before.

Her expression quickly darkened, though, "Let's just say that I spent most of my childhood defending myself against evil."

"I haven't stopped doing that since I was six," he said. Hermione looked up at him, shocked. "Not just a pretty face, sweetheart." Hermione blushed despite herself at the pet name. "I've seen more than you can imagine," his eyes darkened in a way similar to when Harry was talking about the war.

"You'd be surprised what I can imagine," she replied. He looked at her differently then, green eyes boring into brown.

"Yeah, I reckon you're right there," he paused to take a bite of his burger again. They ate in silence for a time, Hermione taking a few sips of the soup in front of her before breaking the chunk of bread into smaller and smaller pieces. "So how d'you know Cas?" He asked, eventually.

"He was my angel. Kept me safe during a war that we had in England. He saved my sanity a time or two."

"He has that effect," Dean agreed, "I hadn't heard of a war," he frowned.

"Yeah, you won't," she shrugged. "Saving the world while living in a secret society has its advantages."

"Ah, I know that feeling," Dean smirked.

Conversation continued, though rather stilted, between the two warriors. Neither went into vivid detail of the traumas they had faced, or the battles they had waged but by the time each had finished their meal they had a mutual respect for each other. They understood that the world was still spinning because of the actions of the person sat on the other side of the table.

They had not noticed that the trenchcoated angel had left his seat at the end of the table.

Following her trip to the States, she had come home to a very irate best friend.

"What if you had died?" Harry had yelled. His temper was more aggressive than she had seen him in a long time. At the look in her eyes that told him that she was not overly bothered by the idea, he had only got more angry. He was running his hands so feverishly through his hair she was sure he was going to pull it out, "I've lost one best friend, don't make it so that I lose another!" He had slammed the plate of salted caramel cupcakes and gooey chocolate brownies that his wife had baked in her own grief driven behaviour down on the kitchen table, Apparated away and not been in contact for a few days.

He had come back to the house, a tupperware box full of shortbread biscuits this time, and apologised. She had smiled, shaken her head and they had spent the rest of the evening on her sofa swapping stories and crying.

Meanwhile, the hesitant friendship that had started in mid November between the witch and the hunter started to bloom over the following six months. It started off with Dean calling Hermione for her opinion on certain cases, which she welcomed as a distraction from the grief. Whenever he would call about biblical seals, or Lucifer, or Archangels, she would throw herself into research and help him as best she could.

During his then weekly visits to Hermione's house, a different baked good in his hand every trip, Harry had often found her buried in books. While he was not as concerned as he had been before her trip to America, he was still bewildered at the increasing number of books on biblical lore and apocalyptic wars. Hermione had explained that while over there, she had met Dean and that he and his brother were in trouble. He had understood then that the new relationship in her life was helping her to process the loss of Ron and was mildly grateful to this American hunter.

As time went on, Hermione became more and more involved in the Winchester's efforts to ensure that the apocalypse would not come to pass. She assured Harry that she would not leave the country without his knowledge again, however, and that she would not put herself on the front line.

In the small hours of the morning, the day after the eleventh anniversary of the Final Battle Hermione was woken up by the buzzing of her mobile phone. She had taken to keeping it next to it next to her bed, as Dean would often forget the time difference between the UK and America.

"Hermione? I know it's early for you, but we are having an all hands on deck situation right now. Would you be able to come here? Cas can come get you."

"Sure, Dean, if I can help, I'll try," she answered. Almost as soon as she spoke the words Castiel appeared in front of her. She looked down at her scruffy pyjamas and looked back at the angel. "Erm, could I have a moment?" He tilted his head, before nodding.

She quickly changed her clothes in the bathroom and packed as many books as she could in her trusty beaded bag, that she had kept in her bedside table for as long as she could remember. She brushed her teeth, piled her curls on the top of her head and tied a silk scarf around her head to catch the flyaways. Remembering her promise to Harry, she cast a quick Patronus to tell him what was going on, reassuring him that she was only leaving to help with research.

She then approached the angel who had sat on her bed to wait for her and reached out her hand.

Angel travel felt smoother than Apparation. Like it was something that anyone could do if they wanted to, muggle or wizard. Once she felt solid ground beneath her feet, Hermione took in her surroundings. They seem to have landed in a room that functioned as an office and living room all at once. In each corner there were tall shelves stuffed with books. Underneath a bay window was a worn red sofa with a threadbare throw over the back. The room was mainly occupied by a large wooden desk in front of a fireplace. The desk was littered with papers, books and maps in a state similar to the desk she had left in her own house. Sat behind the desk was a man that looked to be in his mid fifties with a greying beard. Looking through one of the shelves of books next to the desk was a man that was taller and broader than even Dean was. He looked a little younger than Dean and herself and was running his hand through his hand through his long wavy hair in an action that reminded her of Harry. Dean was sat in a chair to the side of the desk, reading a book.

He looked up at the sound of Castiel's wings, "Hermione," he greeted. "I'd like you to meet my brother, Sam," he gestured to the tall man, "and Bobby," pointing to the man behind the desk. "I figured, you have some experience in stopping the end of the world. You could probably give some fresh insight."

"Let's get to it then," she said, a no nonsense tone in her voice. She flicked her wand at the desk to create more work space before sitting at the table and emptying the books from her beaded bag. It was only then that she noticed that all the men in the room stared at her.

"Undetectable extension charm," she shrugged.

"What did you say you were again, Missy?" Bobby asked gruffly.

"I didn't," she replied, looking him directly in the eye. "Hi my name's Hermione Granger-Weas-" she stopped herself, "Hermione Granger. I'm a witch."

At this the older man's back stiffened and eyes narrowed, then looked over at Dean.

"Who do you think has been helping us with those weird cases lately?" he asked, shrugging.

"You never mentioned no witch," Bobby said.

Sam, she noticed, was also glaring at his brother and glancing suspiciously at her, "Yeah, Dean, bit hypocritical considering the stuff you've said about Ruby. What is it okay for you to be friends with a demon but not me?"

Hermione scoffed and Dean looked at his brother with narrowed eyes, "Do I look like a demon to you? Honestly, those bloody Satanic idiots give us a bad name." She turned to him then, "Have you ever seen any of them use a wand?" she asked. At that he shook his head.

"Hermione has fought against an evil to rival Lucifer himself and is protected by the angels of the Lord," Castiel, who Hermione had forgotten was still in the room, said. At this Sam and Bobby seemed to reluctantly accept the explanation for her presence.

"Right," she said, in her bossiest tone, "where were we?"

Despite their efforts, the seals to 'open the cage' as Dean phrased it, were all broken. Over the following months Hermione and Dean's relationship developed further into a friendship of more than just convenience. She was spending more time flitting between the UK and America, and had set Bobby's fireplace up on the Floo network for ease. She had begun to become more like the person she was before Ron died.

She did not want to admit, but spending time with the hunters, especially a certain sandy haired green eyed hunter, was a welcome relief. Dean's presence in her life had started to heal wounds that had been left when Ron died and the more time she spent with him the more she let him in. Some evenings, when Sam and Bobby had hit the hay, they would sit up with a bottle of Firewhiskey exchanging stories. He opened up about his time in hell and she opened up about the trauma left behind by the war.

He told her about Cassie and she told him about Ron. It helped to talk about him with someone who did not know him. Everyone in England was so intricately interwoven with his life that an outside perspective was refreshing. She told him stories about school and her wedding day and the things she loved about him and the things she hated about him. She laughed, she cried. On the anniversary of her late husband's death she spent her day with Harry, Ginny and the Weasleys, and her evening with Dean, Sam and Bobby. The more she talked about Ron, the more she felt like a weight lifted, and the more open she was to the possibility of opening her heart again.

In time, she took steps to move forward. She moved out of the house they had shared in a quaint village in Devon, to a flat in the centre of Bristol. She had only hung one photograph of the two of them together in the flat. It was from when they first got together after the Battle of Hogwarts. They were smiling at the camera, his arm around her shoulder, hugging her into his body. It showed the intimacy they had for each other, but did not hurt like seeing pictures of later years or their wedding did.

Harry's visits continued, though they started to become more infrequent after the anniversary of Ron's death. He would still come over with a different baked good every trip, though he told her that Ginny was no longer making enough cake to get through a kilo of butter every two days, which he saw as a good sign. They would sit together at the small dining table that sat in the corner of her living room, a cup of tea each and have a slice of whatever he had brought with him. The only exception to this was when he would bring a fruit pie with him.

"Why do you always save the pies?" he asked the third time he had brought one over and she had gone to the kitchen and carefully placed it in her undercounter fridge.

"Dean's favourite is pie," she answered, "I take it through to Bobby's, stick a warming charm on it and give him half of it while the rest of us share the other half." The first time after she told him that, he came with a pie and a batch of brownies.

When Hermione saw this, worry creased her brow, "Is Ginny okay? She's not slipping?"

Harry simply shook his head and said, "The pie's for Dean." Hermione was shocked but smiled. Every time he would visit after that he would always bring a pie.

As time went on, Hermione, the Winchesters, Bobby and Castiel were starting to get more and more desperate in their research. Hermione had asked for a sabbatical from her role in the Ministry in March in an effort to help the brothers full time. She had even gone so far as to ask Harry if he had any contacts in the Department of Mysteries that may be able to help. On a night, just over a year after Dean had called her to help with the seals, she walked through the floo to Bobby's to find Dean on the sofa, bottle of whiskey in hand and a blearly look on his face.

"Dean," she said, shocked to see him alone. It looked like he had been crying. Crouching in front of him, she gently took the whiskey bottle from his hand and put it beside her on the floor, "What's wrong?"

"It's Sammy," he said, "he wants to say yes." He looked at her then, eyes bloodshot and puffy, tears clinging to his long dark lashes. She was uncomfortably aware of how close his face was to hers. His already full lips slightly swollen from drinking straight from the bottle.

She was almost certain she could count the freckles on his face.

That thought made her breath catch in her throat. She had always tried to do that with Ron, spending hours looking into his cerulean blue eyes and counting the freckles on his face. But the eyes staring back at her now were forest green. The intensity in them was much the same.

He reached out and tucked a stray curl behind her ear and she was sure she forgot to breath for two heart beats. His thumb brushed against her cheek and all of a sudden he closed the gap. The moment that his lips met hers it was like a part of her that had lain dormant for an age roared to life.

She moved closer to him, wanting to feel the warmth of his body, falling onto her knees from her crouched position in front of him. She looped her arms around his neck and his arms went around her back. In one, fluid movement he moved them to stand. It was then that the height difference between them became apparent. She stood on her toes, arms still around his neck. Dean moved his hands down her back to her arse, and lifted her.

Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around his waist. He broke the kiss momentarily to ask a silent question. His pupils were blown wide with lust and his breathing was heavy from the kiss. In answer, she kissed him again and that seemed to be all the encouragement he needed. He carried her swiftly up the stairs to the room he was occupying while he was staying with the older hunter and kicked the door behind him before moving them unceremoniously to the bed.

He took a moment to look at the woman beneath him. Her hair had come loose from the knot on top of her head and was falling around her face. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was coming heavily making her chest rise and fall in a mesmerising way. The pupils in her chocolate brown eyes were fully dilated and her lips were pink and swollen from their kisses. She was wearing a t-shirt in charcoal grey that had a deep v, exposing her delicate collar bone and a peak of her cleavage. Her dark blue skinny jeans clung deliciously to her hips and he had already felt her apple bum through them. He reached over, carefully with one hand, her eyes following his movements, and released her wild curls from their restraint. He smiled then and looked back at her face.

"Stunning," he whispered, before capturing her lips again. He propped himself up on his left arm by her head to not crush her, while his other hand moved down her body, stroking her collar bone, then up her arm, which had returned to its position around his neck and then beneath her top. His touches were light against her soft skin, his kisses hungry and needy. His hand moved up her t-shirt and his touches became more firm. She moaned at the feel of his calloused hands against her skin as he moved over her stomach and to her breast.

She had never been one for having her boobs touched before, as it always felt like it was a mechanical move, but the way that Dean was massaging her breast through her underwear made her understand why it could be something so pleasurable. He expertly moved his hand to reach into her bra and pull her breast out of it. As he did this, he moved his lips over her left cheek and down her neck to her collarbone to a point that sent tingles down her spine. His hand, meanwhile, was working her nipple into a point, lightly squeezing and massaging. The feeling of her breast beneath her t-shirt but outside the cup of her bra was a pleasure she had never felt before and when his hand eventually moved away from her nipple she let out a moan of arousal at the sensation.

Shifting his weight to his right arm, he started work on her other breast in much the same way before reaching to remove both her top and bra, exposing her bare breasts to him. He moved his mouth down her collar bone and to her breasts, sucking and nipping at her flesh, while making quick work of her jeans and knickers. Moving first one, then two fingers inside her wet waiting pussy, he used his thumb to rub the little bundle of nerves. Working her into a frenzy, he removed his clothes and only broke his lips from her skin to lift his top over his head. He stood, then at the bottom of the bed, fingers still buried inside her, and watched her squirm.

It was then that Hermione looked over to properly see the man who was doing such sinful things to her body. His skin was smooth and almost completely scar free. The only marks were a large handprint on his upper arm that she knew to be from when he was dragged from hell, and a tattoo on his chest that looked like a pentagram. His chest was broad and chiseled and his muscles well defined. She almost dared not look below his waist but chanced a shy glance. He was thicker than Ron, she noted, but not quite as long. She looked back up to his face and saw a rather cocky smirk there.

"Like what you see, darlin'?" Before she could answer, he was lifting her slightly so that they were in the centre of the bed and he was braced on one arm again positioning himself at her entrance. With one last glance at her expression, he snapped his hips forward. Her head rolled back in ecstasy as she moaned again. Keeping his right arm by her head and the other behind her knee he started moving. She wrapped the leg that he had hitched over his left hip around his back and placed her right foot on the bed beside his hip and met him thrust for thrust.

They moved together in a rhythm as old as time, kisses placed on any part of skin their mouths could find, hands touching where their mouths could not reach, bodies writhing and moving. She was not sure how long they were dancing the age old dance. It could have been minutes, it could have been years, but the moment that one of his hands came between their bodies and his thumb came against her clit, she was undone and so was he.

They collapsed together, limbs tangled, sweat on their brow, and fell asleep where they lay.

When morning broke, they came together again, before showering and making their way down to the living room. They spent the remainder of the morning researching ways for Dean and Sam to avoid becoming vessels for Micheal and Lucifer on the sofa in Bobby's front room. Hermione left Sioux Falls at around noon and placed a gentle kiss on Dean's cheek and a promise to let him know if she finds anything else. Beyond the occasional touch to a knee or shoulder, there was no sign that things may have changed between themOr so they thought.

It seemed that, despite all efforts, there was no fighting the inevitable. Just under a week later, Dean and Sam were driving to Dakota, and both brothers were on edge. It was like one of the dreams Dean had when he was young where no matter how hard he tried, his legs would not move any faster. He looked over at his younger brother in the passenger seat of his baby and saw that he was looking resolutely forward. He remembered seeing a similar look on their Dad's face. The drive through the night was silent and tense, but for one conversation. Sam's determination had made Dean agree to the promise he asked of him. He was not sure if he would be able to keep it, but for his brother he would do anything.

That was what had got them here, after all.

The showdown was bloody, and messy, and heartbreaking. Watching from the sidelines as his brother disappeared into the pit was one of the most painful things that he had ever seen. As soon as it had happened, he wanted to take back what he had said to Sammy and just dig to the centre of the earth until he found the cage and pulled him from it with his bare hands.

When Castiel had returned and healed him, Dean was only mildly grateful. He wanted to ask if he knew how to take the suffering of loss away too. Then he remembered Hermione, almost two years before, asking Castiel why he had not come to her after losing Ron and understood that there were some things that even angels could not cure.

Hermione.

Dean dialled the number in his phone.

"Hello," the voice at the other end of the line was tired and groggy.

"Hey," he said, "sorry to wake you."

"I's okay. Everything alright?"

"Yeah, is it okay if Cas brings me over?"

"Erm, sure," Hermione answered.

A few moments later, he found himself in a modern flat in England, a cup of coffee between his hands as he sat at a simple dining table. Hermione sat across from him, a cup of tea in front of her and a plate of chocolate chip cookies that she told him were from her friend who made the pies for him every week.

He did not really know what to say or how to start the conversation, so stared dazedly at the dark brown liquid in front of him for a while. She apologised when she had handed it over, saying it was instant and that ground or filter coffee was not really something they did in Britain. He had just nodded, numbly. She reached out and placed her hand over one of his on the mug and that had been when the dam broke.

He and Hermione spent the entire night talking, and he told her all about how things had ended. Like she so often had when she would talk about Ron, he switched between laughing and crying in the retelling. When he started crying, she stood from her seat next to him and wrapped him in her arms. She somehow guided them onto her sofa, where she placed his head on her chest and let him sob, just as he had done for her.

Eventually, when it felt like he had no energy left, he looked up at her, wide green eyes vulnerable, "Before everything happened, I made a promise to my brother."

"Oh?"

"He made me promise not to rescue him. He… He asked me to come and find you and not him." She looked down at him, then, surprised.

"Really?"

"Yeah," he smiled. "He wanted me to have the apple pie life. I know that we didn't really talk about what happened the other night and I know that this might be too much for you, after Ron, and…" he chanced a look at her face then and was surprised. Tears were in her eyes and a soft smile was on her lips. "What do you think?"

"I think it's time for both of us to heal," she replied.