Epilogue
Draco awoke the next morning to a tapping on his window. He pulled himself out of bed and let the owl outside it. It was an official Ministry owl, he took the owl's letter and let it back outside. He split the seal, taking a moment to make sure Hermione was still asleep and opened the letter.
Mr. Malfoy,
This letter is to inform you that on 24th December at 10:47pm Narcissa Black-Malfoy was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. The cause of death is undertermined but it is believed to have been a suicide. Mrs. Zabini had informed us that since your father was out of you were her next of kin. We ask that you take immediate action to claim the body and bury it. We are very sorry for your loss.
Hilda Greggory
Secretary
Department of Births and Deaths
Draco stared at the paper in front of him, and it fell from his grasp slowly floating to the ground. He slid down the wall and Hermione found him there, in shock, nearly three hours later.
Hermione spent the rest of the year in relative lonliness. Harry made good on his threat and she found she no longer fit in with the students of Gryffindor. Trying to enforce school policy on them became a joke and eventually she stepped down as House prefect. She began spending more and more time among the pure-blooded Slytherins. Although she and Draco rarely spent any time alone after the fateful Christmas Eve, Hermione had extended an invitation to him to visit her manor during the break.
She became acquaintances with Blaise, Millicent and Pansy. Without the three she doubted she would have survived the school year, exiled as she was from her house and thus, from most of the school. She survived however, and went home glad for the break. She had already had her stable manager contact Mona to invite her to the manor for as long as she could stay.