10.

THE YEAR THEY MARKED THEIR TENTH

September 4th, 2010.

Hermione breathed in the air of the city, the smog and the asphalt, the intermingled scents of coffee and fried food and gourmet cuisine all combining into what was quintessentially London.

The smoke from her cigarette curled through the air in front of her as she reclined at the table of her favourite café. It was her one indulgence, that cigarette. She rarely bothered with the habit anymore but every now and then, when she felt most confidant, most powerful, she couldn't help missing the feeling of a smoke rolling between her fingers and she'd give in to that little reward for all her hard work.

Hermione watched the pedestrians that passed the café, creating stories for them in her mind as she did. After a few moments, she saw a familiar face strutting through the crowd towards her table. But when he caught sight of her, the strutting stopped and turned into a somewhat fearful shamble.

Hermione smirked.

"Cormac," she greeted him when he was close, getting up to shake his large hand.

"Hermione," he grunted in response.

She resumed her seat and gestured for him to join her. He did.

"So," she said, still smirking as she leant forward on the table, cigarette still in hand, "It's not often that I get to share coffee with the Ministry's most eligible bachelor…"

Cormac seemed to relax a little at her outwardly flirtatious behaviour and said, "Well I thought you deserved a treat."

Hermione giggled, thinking that he was a fool for being appeased by her overly friendly behaviour. If he knew her well enough, he'd know that if anything he should be more frightened. "Well now, I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it a treat but nonetheless, here we are. There must be a reason for your inviting me here," she grinned in a somewhat threatening manner, "I suggest you cut to the chase and tell me the bad news."

"I don't know what you mean," said Cormac and she was satisfied to see a slight sheen of sweat on his brow.

"Well," she sighed, exhaling a thin stream of smoke and stubbing out her butt in the ashtray sitting in front of her, "It's not hard to put two and two together, is it? Given that usually, we have our little meetings either in my office or via floo, where I am at complete liberty to lose my temper if I find your efforts disappointing, I can only assume that you would wish to avoid such a scenario. Here in the open, I am constrained by propriety to remain calm no matter how bad the news you have for me may be."

Cormac shook his head, grimacing, "You're a smart woman, Hermione."

"I'm a good lawyer, Cormac."

He ran a hand through his hair nervously and stared adamantly at the table. "Ok. Fine, I'll get to the point then. But you're not going to like it."

Hermione rolled her eyes slightly. "Oh, what a transformation…"

"Look. I can confirm that there will be some underlying trouble at the reunion, alright? Your hunch was well and truly on the money."

"I know. When are my hunches ever not on the money? However, I fear I can sense a 'but' coming on…"

Cormac's grimace widened slightly and he nodded, "But I don't know what will be happening or who it might involve."

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Do you have any idea who might be targeted?"

"No."

"You have no theories? No suggestions?" she huffed frustratedly.

"I'm afraid not."

Hermione grasped her bag from beside her chair and tossed a few pounds down onto the table as she stood.

"Very well then," she said before she moved around the table and leant down closer to his face, one hand on the back of his chair and the other on the table in front of him. "But I would be afraid if I were you, Cormac. If I find out that you are withholding information from me, and do not for a second think that I would believe you above that, know that I will bring the full force of the law down on your shoulders with so much weight it will crush your bones to dust. Understood?"

He swallowed fearfully and nodded.

Hermione strode away without a backward glance.

Later that evening, well and truly drained by her day in the court room, Hermione strode up the garden path of her and Ron's picturesque home, far later than she might have wished, drawing her scarf tighter about her neck to ward off the cold and biting Autumn wind.

The moment she passed through the front door into the warmth of her home, a jubilant voice echoed down the hall, accompanied by the sound of pattering footsteps.

"Mummy, mummy, mummy!" cried Rose, her short, strawberry blonde ringlets bouncing around her face as she ran.

"Hello lovely," Hermione responded, beaming and sweeping the three year old up into her arms.

"Daddy got a book," Rose informed her mother enthusiastically as Hermione carried her down the hall towards the stairs that led down to the kitchen.

"Did he now?" asked Hermione, somewhat shocked, "What kind of book?"

"One with pictures."

"For you?"

"And Hugo too!"

Hermione gave a bemused laugh, "Well that's… Very good."

"I still want you to read Jane though," Rose reassured her.

Her mother laughed, "Of course I will."

Rose was, of course, speaking of Pride and Prejudice, which Hermione read aloud to her every night. The name had proven far too difficult for the three year old to grasp and so Rose had simply come to know it as 'Jane' after the author.

The two of them descended into the kitchen where they found Ron standing over the stove, swapping between stirring the contents of a large pot and cooing softly to Hugo who was bouncing and gurgling happily in a magically suspended elastic swing beside him. Ron turned at their entrance, smiling.

"Look matey, mum's home!" he said to Hugo before moving around the table to kiss Hermione on the lips and take Rose out of her arms.

"Do you need a hand?" asked Hermione as he went back to the pot on the stove with Rose on his hip to give her the traditional taste.

He shook his head and waved her off, "Nah, babe, I got this."

Hermione laughed, "I'm sure you do."

Ron's cooking skills had mysteriously improved over the last few months and she was grateful for it. An Auror's schedule was far tighter than that of a lawyer's, meaning Ron was almost always home by four o'clock every afternoon whereas Hermione could stumble through the door any time between lunchtime and midnight depending on the amount of work she had. It had become apparent, as the kids got older, that Ron's feeble efforts to branch out from stir fry, the only dish he'd ever really mastered, needed to be worked on.

Hermione's schedule had picked up noticeably since Hugo had been born. She'd fallen into somewhat of a lull professionally after Rose's birth, and had stayed there in the years between her two children, only taking on a case here and there, taking somewhat of a backseat regarding the ways the country was governed and the laws that were passed. Her influence that had been carefully honed and tried in those first few years in Dawn Fortescue's office had dwindled significantly until she'd thrown herself back into her job with renewed vigour and passion.

Ron had taken over as primary carer of both their children. He was the one that dropped them off at their grandparents every morning and picked them up every night, the one that dressed them and bathed them and fed them. Hermione sort of liked it that way because it meant she got to be the fun parent.

Ginny, who had given up her position on the Holyhead Harpies with her and Harry's third child on the way, and had taken a cushy job at the Daily Prophet writing for the sports section, had, on innumerable occasions, attempted to guilt Hermione on her work load, citing that she didn't spend enough time with her children and it was unfair for them to grow up 'without a mother'. Hermione disagreed. She found her situation quite favourable. It wasn't like she was never around, even if she did have the occasional late night, she would never give up a second of her weekends to anyone but Rose and Hugo. And they seemed fine, Ron seemed fine. Their family was fine. They'd all fallen into an easy, comfortable routine which worked well for all of them.

Surprisingly, given all that had taken place the previous year, Hermione was genuinely happy. She found in herself a sort of hardness and resilience that hadn't been around for a long, long time.

She thought of all this as she watched Ron and Rose giggling over by the stove as Rose tried to tell her father exactly what was wrong with his stew in her somewhat limited vocabulary. Hermione laughed aloud at her husband struggling to understand his daughter's instructions.

"Salt?" he asked, chuckling, "You think it needs salt?"

"Nooo!" whined Rose, clearly frustrated by how dense he was being, "Yellow! Yellow!"

"Yellow?! Yellow what?!"

Rose grimaced fiercely as she held her tiny hand up in front of her father's face and opened and closed her fist over and over again. He didn't seemed to understand the gesture any better than any of her other clues and she pouted in exasperation.

"Well what does it taste like then?" asked Ron, his expression a cross between amusement and panic.

"Tastes like…" Rose thought for a moment before she scrunched up her face and smacked her lips.

Hermione giggled, finally intervening when Ron continued to look confused, "Do you mean sour, Rosie? It tastes sour?"

"Yeah!" exclaimed Rose, giving her mother a grateful grin.

"Yellow and sour…" said Ron, "Aha! You mean a lemon! You think it needs lemon!"

"Yeah!" cried his daughter, clapping her hands joyfully.

He set her down on the ground as he went about obtaining a lemon and she waddled over to her brother and began chattering at him about the intricacies of cooking. Hugo stared up at her wide eyed and adoring as he listened.

Hermione moved around the table and sat down not far from where Ron was standing.

"How was work?" he asked her, a hint of seriousness weaving through his tone. The question was more than a polite enquiry.

Hermione matched his tone, "Disappointing. But I didn't come away with nothing at all. We'll talk about it once the kids are in bed."

Ron looked tense and nodded. She knew that he and the rest of his Auror colleagues had been somewhat relying on the information she was supposed to acquire that day regarding the Hogwarts ten year reunion. Since she'd re-established herself in her position, she'd become almost indispensable to them, providing them with information that they had no way of obtaining. The Aurors were the enemies of criminals and dark wizards alike, no member of the shadier side of the wizarding world was interested in sharing any sensitive information with them. But Hermione, as a lawyer, was in a far better position because she could be either enemy or friend depending on how much money she was offered. Of course, in her own sly way, she always made sure the most vicious criminals got exactly what they deserved, but she did it in a way that made it seem, to the outside world, as if she'd gotten the best deal she could for her clients.

So she had access to the sort of information the Aurors didn't because all the crooks wanted her on their side. And that didn't just mean dark wizards, it meant corrupt ministry officials too. Like Cormac. Over the years, he'd grown to fear and loath Hermione, as much as he tried to pretend otherwise, but she had so much on him that he had little choice but to give her all the information she desired.

It was a very carefully constructed hierarchy, with Hermione at the top. She'd even let rumours fly, and even started a few herself, about her and Ron's marriage being full of deceit and infidelity just so that the Cormac's of the world weren't so worried about her taking all her new found intelligence back to her Auror husband.

She'd already been instrumental, even in the ten months that had passed since she'd started back at work properly, to bringing down quite a few dangerous dark wizards across the country. It made her feel powerful. It made her feel valuable. And secretly, she loved that.

Later that night, after Rose and Hugo were safely tucked up in bed, Hermione and Ron shared tea in her study and talked about the events of the day.

"So there's no clue as to who's behind this?" Ron asked, frowning.

"Not so far as I know. But it's difficult to tell, really. I mean the reunion is going to be big, far bigger than Hogwarts would usually deal with. We have more suspects than we can really keep track of."

Because of the confusion surrounding the years of the war, Headmistress McGonagall had chosen to simply meld three class years into one for that particular reunion and call it the tenth, meaning that Harry, Ron and Hermione's year would be there as well as the year above them and the year below, Ginny and Luna's year. It was all very confusing, the upside being that all of them got to celebrate their graduation together, the downside being that what with three sets of graduating classes and their partners, it was harder to regulate.

"Trust me," said Ron, "We'll keep track of them. I'll have McGonagall owl me the guest list."

"That won't cover everyone though… I mean, we know the invitations are sent out to specific students with an optional plus one. We can't know who those plus ones might be, can we?"

"Security will be tight on the night."

"Good. That's good. Frankly I can't really see how anyone in their right minds could possibly even contemplate mounting an attack on the reunion. We've got a nice little crowd of Aurors attending, plus about ninety percent of us are war veterans. It just seems a little silly if you ask me. A whole room occupied by people either trained in defensive magic or with vast field experience in it."

"I know… it seems pretty stupid. So I reckon that rules out any higher up dark wizard activity. If anything, I'd say we're dealing with standard heavies. Crabbe and Goyle types."

"I think you're probably right."

"I just wish we could have gotten this information sooner. I could have gotten McGonagall to tighten the invitations a little bit. But with the reunion only four day away, there's not much we can do really except the standard stuff. Security screening, Aurors on duty, foe glass… I don't know."

Ron ran an anxious hand through his hair and Hermione laid a hand on his arm, her face softening out of the harsh line of strategy into a loving smile.

"It'll be ok, babe. I think we'd have to be attacked by a full blown army for it to do any real damaged. We're too powerful as a group."

He nodded and leant forward to press a kiss to her forehead.

"You're right."

Hand in hand and yawning widely, Hermione and Ron mounted the stairs up to their bedroom, putting the business of the reunion out of their minds.

September 8th, 2010.

There was definitely an odd feeling in the air. Hermione couldn't keep still, her eyes darting left and right all over the great hall, noting every guest that entered or exited the party. She and Ron had only been there for half an hour and though he seemed relaxed enough, she was on edge.

The hall was decorated lavishly and extravagantly, not unlike the Yule Ball in her fourth year. Most of the people present were people she knew, even if only distantly, recognising them because she'd passed them in the corridors so often in her Hogwarts days. It was the people she didn't recognise that had her nervous and there were more than a few of them.

As Hermione's eyes swept the room for the fiftieth time, she noticed one such person bent over the deserts table a few metres away. She grasped Harry's arm, who was standing beside her and hissed, "Harry, see that brunette witch over there? The one in the ridiculous green robes? Who is that?"

Harry rolled his eyes good naturedly and prized her fingers off his arm. "That's Seamus Finnegan's wife Rhonda, Hermione, you need to calm down."

"How can I? How can you be so calm?"

"Because I'm an Auror. This is what we do. You're just not used to this, that's all."

"Too right."

"Look, if someone's going to make trouble here, they'll show themselves soon enough. Until then, relax. Being jumpy isn't going to serve any purpose."

"Well I disagree. It's going to mean I'll be ready the moment something happens."

Harry chuckled and rubbed her back reassuringly. "What can happen? Wands are being confiscated at the door so they can't use magic. The worst that can happen is a very messy food fight."

Hermione scowled. She was well aware that wands had been confiscated off everyone bar the qualified Aurors among them the moment they set foot into the castle. But that didn't stop her worrying. If anything, it worsened her anxiety. Their attackers may have been unarmed but so was she.

"What's wrong with you?" asked a voice from her other side and Hermione turned to find Blaise grinning down at her.

"Nothing," she grumbled sourly.

He pushed against her affectionately. "Chill out, Hermione. We're safe… Anyway, this is supposed to be a party! Time to reminisce about our school days! Our wayward, youthful shenanigans!"

She scowled at him but he merely met her look with a cheeky grin.

"I've a story for you, speaking of shenanigans, would you like to hear it? It's juicy…"

A reluctant smile crept up her face and she said, "Alright, go on then."

"It pertains to a mutual friend of ours, ah! Here she is!"

Blaise seemed to scoop Isobel out of thin air beside him. The younger witch looked momentarily bemused.

"I was just about to tell Hermione here the story of your unfortunate encounter with one of our esteemed housemates, Marcus Flint," said Blaise lightly.

Isobel's expression turned ashen and she whacked Blaise's arm with the back of her hand. "Don't you dare!"

"What?" said Hermione, giggling, "Please don't tell me you're talking about that great hulking brute that used to captain the Slytherin quidditch team? And please don't tell me you mean 'encounter' the way you usually mean it, Blaise…"

Blaise looked positively diabolical, grinning as Isobel stared up at him with a mixture of anguish, embarrassment and amusement.

"I am. And I do," Blaise confirmed happily.

Isobel groaned.

"So, in our sixth year, it became general knowledge that young Isobel here was nursing a bit of a school girl crush on our Quidditch captain," he began, revelling in Isobel's apparent dismay.

"Good lord, Isobel, please tell me that isn't true!" exclaimed Ginny, who'd come to join the conversation.

Isobel looked pained but didn't answer.

Blaise continued ruthlessly. "Naturally, she was given a certain amount of flack about said crush until, by design or by chance, this information was made known to Marcus himself. But rather than brutally casting aside our young Isobel, as we thought he would, the oaf actually deigns to ask her out. And by 'out' of course I mean he asked her to rendezvous with him in a broom cupboard in the middle of the night. She, of course, being in the throes of undying love, agreed and together they formulated a plan to meet at the stroke of midnight in the broom cupboard on the second floor, near the charms classroom. So off they went to their romantic tryst and, one can only assume, they got rather far before they were unceremoniously discovered by none other than Peeves himself."

By this time Hermione was already cackling along with Ginny, Harry, Ron and Padma and Eli who'd also joined in the conversation.

"Naturally they abandoned their mission to procreate and careened back towards the Slytherin dormitories. Now I could not tell you what state our young friend was in when she returned to the common room, for she made it up to her dormitory without incident. And it was only once she had arrived there that she realised she was all alone. Marcus, it seemed, was not following her. It wasn't until the next morning that our late potions master, along with half of Slytherin, found him fully asleep and completely naked, with his foot stuck in the vanishing step on the stair way that led down to the dungeons."

Hermione clutched at her stomach and doubled over in laughter.

"How did the rest of the school not find out about this?!" demanded Ron between gasps as he tried to catch his breath.

"We're Slytherins," said Draco, appearing at Harry's elbow grinning, "We're house proud. But, if you're interested to know, that's how Isobel came by her reputation as a bit of a man eater. There were long debates over whether it was an accident or she'd put him there herself."

"Which I certainly didn't!" exclaimed Isobel indignantly.

"For some reason, I don't believe you," said Blaise pensively, smiling.

"What about you three?" asked Eli, gesturing at Hermione, Harry and Ron, "I bet you guys have a bit of dirt on each other…"

Hermione looked sheepish, Harry grimaced and Ron chuckled smugly.

"Have you met me, mate?" he said, "No one's got a bad word to say about Ron Weasley…"

The collected group laughed at the irony of this statement before Hermione said, with a raised eyebrow, "Well there was that thing suctioned onto your face for most of sixth year…"

"Hey!" Harry guffawed, "That thing has a name!"

"Oh yeah! I remember now! Lav Lav, wasn't it?" giggled Hermione impishly.

Ron chuckled, "You can't talk with all your notoriously impressive boyfriends!"

"Too right!" said Harry, "Krum first, then Maclagan… Anyone else we've missed?"

Hermione snorted and rolled her eyes good naturedly.

"Don't forget me," said Draco, grinning, "The bad boy Death Eater."

"You have got quite a roster there, darling," Isobel giggled, "We should compare notes…"

"Hey, there'll be no note sharing…" Ron growled in mock sternness.

"It's alright love," said Hermione reassuringly, looping her arm through his, "You're notorious and impressive enough for me, don't worry."

"Yeah, you like the quiet life now, don't you Hermione?" asked Harry in amusement.

Ron chuckled before pecking Hermione on the cheek and saying, "As amazingly entertaining as this conversation is, I'm off to the loo."

"I'll come with," said Blaise before the two of them disappeared into the crowd.

The light hearted and jovial conversation had relaxed Hermione. She was still scanning the crowd a little but her fever and anxiety had lessened so that she was giving the room more of a lazy perusal that anything else.

The group around her kept on talking but she was not listening. She didn't feel the need to listen, she was just comfortable with their voices and their laughter all around her. It seemed to her, in that moment, that the fact that they were all there still was something to be marvelled at. That they could pay each other out and make fun but there was nothing they could say to each other anymore that could do any real harm. Ten years it had been since the tovarasi had formed, and they'd never strayed from her side. They remained involved in her life and each other's lives without pause or incident. It was more than she could have wished for herself.

It didn't matter what she'd achieved in her life, didn't matter that she was a nationally respected and feared lawyer or that she was a hero of one of the biggest and most devastating wars in wizarding history. Her greatest achievement would always be all of them. The tovarasi. After all they'd been through as a group, all the pain they'd experienced together and supported each other through, it was a blessing and a miracle that they all still loved each other, that there were no more poisonous resentments, only respect and friendship and laughter.

After some time, as members of the group came and went, Hermione spotted a familiar face up at the staff table. Without really thinking, she turned to Harry beside her and said, "I'll be back in a moment."

Harry nodded and smiled and Hermione broke away from the group. She walked only a few steps before she turned around again.

"Did you see where Ron got to?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "Went to the loo. He must have gotten caught up in conversation on his way back."

"Ok, well if you see him, let him know I'm up at the staff table."

"Will do," Harry told her.

Hermione turned again and wound her way through the crowd to the end of the hall.

"Hello Teodora," she said with real warmth once she reached the staff table.

Her old Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher beamed and stood to envelop Hermione in an affectionate, incense scented hug.

"My old friend," said the older witch, "It's been too long."

Hermione took a seat beside Teodora and smiled, "You're telling me. It's genuinely inconceivable that it's been ten years since I walked these corridors every day."

Teodora sighed happily, "I share your disbelief, Hermione. I do not feel any older and yet I look at you and see a woman, not a little girl and I am reminded of all that time that has passed."

"How have your classes been going?"

"I am loving every minute of it. The joy that came to me the first day I taught at this school has not left me. I am fericit, I am content. And you? I read about you now, in the Daily Prophet. They say you are… what was it?" the older woman frowned, trying to bring the memory forth in her mind, "A woman with all the power of a queen and all the ruthlessness of an executioner."

Hermione chuckled and raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's only half true."

Teodora laughed loudly. "My love, I hope it is all true. Not to another soul would I trust such a personality."

"Thank you, I hope I can live up to that praise," said Hermione wryly.

"You already have, Hermione," Teodora's voice turned serious, "There was a time when I did not think you would pull yourself out of the darkness that engulfed you. I remember… I remember a day that I had come to your flat in Diagon Alley all those years ago. We had a conversation, do you recall it? The force of your pain was of such great strength that you exploded your cup…"

Hermione nodded. She remembered that day well. If it had not been for that feeling, for her panic, she'd have never found out about the wand, about Voldemort's final Horcrux. How different would her life and the lives of her tovarasi be now if not for the conversation with Teodora that had pushed her over the edge?

Teodora continued, not realising the heavy relevance of what she was saying, "You were so sad, Hermione, so broken. I truly feared for you then. I thought I had lost you… But, here you are. Luminous."

Hermione didn't know quite what to say. She was overcome slightly, with a sadness she hadn't let herself feel for a while. There was a tightness in her stomach that she didn't like.

She might look luminous on the outside, her life may have looked luminous, but behind the curtain there was so much dark history that she almost couldn't even bare to acknowledge it.

Hermione Granger did not forget. She forgave and she tried hard to lessen her resentments, but she didn't forget. Her own screams of pain, echoing across the decades of her life, were very real and very potent in her ears.

But that was life. She acknowledged that. There were luminous parts too it, and there were dark parts. Sometimes though, she wished she didn't have to be so aware of the polarity, she wished she didn't have to feel it so separately. She wished she didn't have to look at Ron on some days and see her life partner, the person she poured all her hope and trust into, and on other days see the man that always walked out on her.

As if Teodora could read her mind and the silence that was pervading over them, the older woman took Hermione's hand in her own and squeezed it. Together they stared out at the gathered throng of witches and wizards from the staff table, hand in hand.

That was Hermione's saving grace. She loved. Full stop. She loved. Through darkness and light, she always loved.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Hermione's thoughts, her melancholy, was utterly broken as the air was rent with a cacophonous bang that made her ears ring.

She leapt to her feet, along with Teodora, panic tearing through her body as she chastised herself for becoming so complacent. The two of them stared around the suddenly frantic crowd that was scattered before them for the source of the sound. The gathered guests seemed to be of the same mind, craning their necks to see. But panic hadn't set in just yet, only tense confusion. That atmosphere did not last for long. Though Hermione could not see it, the source seemed to have been found. Screaming and yelling filled the space with a chaotic and dissonant uproar of noise. People were running, tripping, falling, some looking around in total confusion, not having grasped what was happening at all, not having realised that this was indeed the attack the Aurors had feared.

Hermione found herself momentarily in awe of how a room could go from one atmosphere, one of calm and happiness to another of fear and panic so suddenly and abruptly.

Her eyes swept over the crowd in search of any familiar face, any of her friends. She caught sight of Isobel's blonde hair whipping about as her head turned this way and that, and saw Ginny beside her. But there was no sign of Ron, Harry, Blaise or Draco anywhere.

Then, the same bang rent the air again and silence, thick and frightening, filled the hall.

Hermione found the source.

A large circle had formed in the middle of the hall as the party guests pressed themselves against the walls in fear, and in the middle of it stood none other than Theodore Nott, Gregory Goyle and Pansy Parkinson who had her arm wrapped around the neck of a woman Hermione didn't know. All three of the former Azkaban prisoners looked too thin, pale, gaunt and sick. Pansy's black hair hung lank and greasy around her pallid, crazed face. It was hard to believe she was once considered a beauty.

She was holding something in her hand, against the woman's head, but Hermione could not see it from so far away and simply assumed it was a wand. After a second's thought, she discreetly ducked under the staff table and moved under it so that she could push, crouched, through the crowd gather in front of her.

"Anybody moves," Pansy yelled to the hall at large, "Any of you even breathe, and she dies."

Hermione suddenly collided with a body in the crowd, crouched low like her. Harry. His wand was in his hand.

"Where's Ron?" Hermione mouthed silently.

"I don't know," Harry mouthed back, his face a mixture of fear and fury.

He leant very close to her ear and breathed, "The Auror's are getting into position. Keep her talking if you can."

Hermione nodded and they separated, Harry moving off to the side and her pushing forwards. Slowly she came to the very edge of the line of people where she stood and stepped out into the open.

"Aha!" cried Pansy, looking positively jubilant when she caught sight of her, "Here's my lawyer! Here's the woman you can thank for my shortened sentence! Wouldn't be here without her!"

Hermione took a careful step forward. "What are you doing, Pansy?" she said lowly, holding her hands out in a placating gesture.

The jubilant look on Pansy's face morphed into a mask of cruelty and violence. "Come and closer, Granger, even one fucking step, and I'll kill her."

She jerked the woman she held slightly and when she did, Hermione finally caught sight of the instrument in her hand, held to the woman's temple.

Pansy Parkinson was holding a gun.

Hermione's blood ran cold. Not many people present would realise what that cold metal thing was, what it was capable of. No wonder so many people in the crowd looking confused. They were too busy staring at Crabbe and Nott who were standing on either side of Pansy with wands in their hands, turning slowly around in battle stance, ready to defend her should the need arise.

And the worst thing was, there wasn't anything in Auror training that detailed how to fight against a person with a gun. That was muggle technology.

"What do you want here, Pansy?" asked Hermione.

"What?" Pansy snarled.

"I'm trying to negotiate with you. You have a hostage and I'd like to trade the hostage for whatever it is you've come here to attain. So I'll ask again, what do you want?"

Pansy grinned a grin of total insanity. "I want mudbloods like you rotting in the ground."

Hermione cringed. It had been so long since she'd had that word used against her, since she'd even heard it at all. It was a shock. And the fact that this was Pansy's motive made it clear that negotiation was impossible.

"Well, I can assure you that woman is not a mudblood," said Hermione, flailing for a way to keep the conversation going, "Her name is Melissa, and she's from a long line of wizards. Her grandfather invented the Draught of Living Death, didn't he Melissa?"

She almost sighed in relief when the woman whimpered and nodded against Pansy's arm, going along with Hermione's blatant untruth.

Pansy laughed. "Yes, that would be convenient wouldn't it? But I know you, Granger, you're a lawyer and lawyer's lie."

Hermione took another careful step forward. "Please listen to reason, Pansy-"

Pansy cut her off. "I, however, don't lie! Didn't I say I'd kill her if you came any closer? Well…"

With that, Pansy thrust the woman to the ground in front of her, pointed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger. Blood and bits of bone sprayed across the wooden floor as the scream of the gun proceeded the screams of the crowd. The woman lay still in a rapidly growing pool of her own blood.

Hermione was thrust forward as the crowd surged violently in its hysteria to reach the doors of the hall.

She crashed to her hands and knees mere metres away from Pansy, Crabbe and Nott, as more bangs, the sound of spell fire now accompanying the pistol, surrounded her. Total chaos reigned for a few seconds as the hall quickly emptied of all bar the Aurors and Hermione. She scrambled to her feet, ready to follow the crowd out of the castle. She didn't have her wand, she knew there was no capacity in which she could possibly help in any other way than to be another hostage.

But almost as soon as she'd regained her footing and set off at a run towards the doors, she suddenly collided with something painfully and was launched backwards. From behind her she heard the sound of Pansy cackling madly.

"Wrong side of the shield charm, Granger!" she cried jubilantly.

Hermione turned around to see Pansy approaching her, silhouetted occasionally against the Auror's spells as they crashed against the shield and Crabbe and Nott's spells as they fired back. But Pansy ignored all this.

Hermione pushed herself to her feet again, her eyes fixed on Nott who was standing with his back to her. If she could only wrestle the wand from his hand…

But Pansy laughed again. "Don't even try. Just give up… No? You always were too fucking noble for your own good. Well I'll make you give up then."

Pansy raised the gun a second time and fired. The bullet landed in Hermione's thigh and she screamed in agony, her hands flying to the wound immediately to try and stem the thick, red flow that was rapidly beginning to cover her light blue dress, turning it crimson. Pansy closed the remaining distance between them in two steps and Hermione felt the terrifying coldness of the gun pressed into her forehead.

"Look at all that dirty blood," Pansy giggled quietly, "You know, I'm really going to enjoy this. After ten fucking years in Azkaban, it's such a poetic coincidence that I get to murder the very person that put me there on my first day out."

Hermione closed her eyes and pictured Rose and Hugo, she thought of the feel of their skin under her fingers, the sound of their laughter. She didn't want Pansy Parkinson's face and the cold metal pressed into her forehead to be the last thing she ever experienced.

But the death she was expecting never came.

She opened her eyes and looked up to see Pansy's gaze trained above her head, staring at someone behind her on the other side of the shield charm.

"Potter," she snarled viciously, "If you think I won't-"

But she wasn't given the opportunity to finish her sentence.

"Avada Kedavra," said Harry's voice, full of cold, ruthless fury.

And then, in a flash of green light, Pansy Parkinson was dead. Her body crumpled inwards with the force of the spell and she fell to the ground.

Hermione could do nothing but stare at her corpse with a mixture of terror, revulsion and relief before Harry growled behind her, "What the fuck are you doing, Hermione, RUN!"

"Does it look like I can fucking run, Harry!" she snarled back, her hand still pressed into the wound in her leg.

His eyes moved down to her thigh and his face drained of colour. He took a frantic step forward, hands held out ready to help her stem the flow but he was thrown backwards. The shield charm was still in place and though an Unforgiveable Curse may have been able to get through, he couldn't.

Hermione's head snapped around just in time to see Crabbe and Nott notice Pansy's limp body. Collectively, the two of them turned as one, their faces lined with grief and rage and Hermione knew without a shadow of a doubt that those feeling were about to be directed at her. She had nowhere to run to and no weapon to wield against them.

But then, in a stroke of what she thought was absolutely genius, Hermione remembered the gun. She dived forward, abandoning her attempt to stem the flow of her blood, the movement causing the wound to scream in response, and wrenched the gun from underneath Pansy's dead body.

She raised it quickly, her finger fluttering on the trigger.

Crabbe and Nott, who'd been advancing on her, stopped in their tracks. Evidently Pansy had explained to them what the weapon was and what it could do for they were looking at it as if it were a doomsday device, a ticking bomb.

"Lower the shield charm!" Hermione demanded, trying to pour her remaining strength into her voice. Nott and Crabbe exchanged a frightened look. "LOWER THE FUCKING CHARM!" she bellowed and to her relief, Crabbe flicked his wand. The resistance behind her crumbled.

The Auror's were on them within seconds. Hermione dropped the gun and fell back onto her elbows just as Harry appeared behind her, catching her body. Moments later, Bo was at her side, staring down at Hermione's wounded and blood soaked leg.

"I can heal this, Hermione, it'll be alright," she reassured her, before, to Hermione's alarm, raising her wand.

"Wait! No! You have to get the bullet out!" Hermione screeched.

"The what?" Bo responded, alarmed.

"The thing they fucking shot me with! It's in my leg! You have to get it out!"

"How are we supposed to do that?!" demanded Harry, sounding horrified.

Hermione groaned and sat forwards, seizing Bo's wand. She pointed it at the ragged hole in her skin and said, "Accio bullet!"

She'd never know she could scream like that as the bullet that had been lodged deeply in her leg seconds before, clattered on the wooden floor.

With a white faced look of absolute revulsion, Bo went about healing the wound until there was nothing left of it but a puckered, angry looking scar. She then reached into a bag slung about her hips and retrieved a vial which she pushed into Hermione hand.

"Blood replenishing potion," she said faintly.

Hermione downed the liquid in one, relaxing slightly as the weakness and nausea began to ebb from her body as her blood loss eased.

"Where's Ron?" she asked Harry weakly, who was still supporting her body from behind.

"We don't know," he replied fearfully, "We're looking for him now."

"And everyone else?"

"Draco's seeing Crabbe and Nott to Azkaban, the rest of the tovarasi are outside being as useful as they can be with the crowd and… and we don't know where Blaise is either."

Hermione groaned. Together, her and Harry sat in silence for a few moment, watching as the Auror's buzzed around them, as Pansy's body was dragged away and the body of the unnamed woman was covered up.

"Who was she?" asked Hermione after a moment.

"Justin Finch-Fletchley's wife Vanessa," replied Harry woodenly. "And before you go blaming yourself I think Pansy always meant to kill her. She wouldn't have done it impulsively. It was too big a move."

"Yes but it may have been prevented if…"

"If what? If I hadn't told you to go out and try to talk to her? If you hadn't attempted to negotiate? You did all the right things, Hermione, understand that. It was Parkinson who committed the crime, not you."

"And now Pansy's dead too."

"She is. And Nott and Crabbe are on their way back to Azkaban," Harry paused for a moment before saying quietly, "Was she telling the truth? Did you defend her?"

Hermione nodded. "I did. She was one of my first clients. She was trying to appeal the Wizengamot's life sentence. Had already been in Azkaban for three years. I thought… she seemed different. Like she really just wanted to put it all behind her, you know? That's why I tried so hard to get her sentence shortened, because I thought she had genuinely changed."

Harry sighed. "Maybe she had. Maybe ten years in Azkaban simply changed her back."

Hermione nodded sombrely and sighed.

Harry was right of course, there was no use blaming herself for any of the night's events. No one would have guessed that Pansy had a gun, that was her trump card. If she'd come in with a wand, the whole situation would have been stabilised within minutes. The only reason the Auror's hadn't disintegrated the shield char the moment they'd noticed it's presence was because they feared another casualty in Hermione. They were working against a weapon they had no knowledge of at all.

Suddenly, the doors to the great hall, which were shut against the crowd, burst open.

"WHERE'S MY WIFE?!" bellowed a familiar voice that filled Hermione with relief.

She sat up off Harry, being careful to move slowly as her body hadn't quite righted itself yet.

"Here," she said, weakly raising her arm.

Ron's eye's found her and he launched into a run, skidding to a halt on his knees in front of her and enveloping her in a rib crushing hug.

"When I didn't find you outside and they said… they said you were still in here and someone had been shot I… I…" he seemed entirely beside himself.

Hermione could do nothing but pat him feebly on the back as she returned his hug.

When he finally broke away, Harry, to Ron's surprise, punched him in the arm.

"Where the pigging hell have you been?!" he demanded.

"Ow! Bloody hell Harry! I got knocked out in the bathroom, didn't I? Bastard took my wand and Blaise's too!"

"So Blaise is ok?" asked Hermione worriedly.

"Aside from a nasty bump on the head, yeah."

"Thank god."

At that moment, Bo reappeared to check on Hermione's progress.

"Do we know how they got in?" Harry asked her seriously.

"Glamour charms we think, Grant and Washington have been questioning the guests and no one has any recollection of seeing either Parkinson, Crabbe or Nott at any other point over the course of the evening, until they revealed themselves. From what we can gather, Crabbe and Nott accosted Ron and Blaise in the men's bathrooms, knocked them out, stole their wands and the rest you saw," Bo told him as she waved her wand over Hermione's body.

"And the gun?" asked Hermione, "How did they smuggle the gun in?"

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "They didn't need to smuggle it in. We were using dark magic detectors on the guests, not metal detectors. She could have brought it into the castle in her handbag and we wouldn't have known."

"Right. Well, first thing's first," she said as she used Ron's shoulder to push herself to her feet, "I need to get to the office."

"What?!" demanded Harry, looking thoroughly shocked, "You just accioed a bullet out of your own leg Hermione, and now you're talking about going to work?!"

"She did what?!" exclaimed Ron.

Hermione ignored both of them. "New laws need to be written up so that this sort of thing won't happen again. You know how trends run with dark wizards. You know that Pansy won't be the last to use muggle weapons against wizards once word of this gets out. The Auror's will need to have new courses on muggle weaponry introduced into their training. And metal detectors will need to be added to any security measures undertaken around major events. Law will need to be passed. There is work to be done. You do your job and let me do mine."

She stumbled sideways a little as a phantom pain shot through her previously injured leg but no amount of pain was going to stop her doing her duty.

"Bo," she said in a strained voice, "I'll need my wand."

Bo gave her an admiring look while Harry and Ron's expressions remained disbelieving and indignant.

"Come with me then, I'll have someone escort you off the grounds," said the older which approvingly.

"Thank you," said Hermione before turning to Ron, "I'll see you at home. And if any new information comes up, please have someone get it to me as soon as possible."

Without waiting for a response, Hermione left the hall with Bo.

As she walked through the dark grounds towards the Hogwarts boundary, an Auror at her side, Hermione felt herself fill with all her Gryffindor courage and resilience. This was what kept the darkness at bay, this is what held her life together, the fact that no matter what, no matter how traumatised or scared or hurt she was, she'd always do her duty.

This was what made her luminous.

A/N - Ok! So that was a rather action packed chapter. I had so much fun writing it too! Though honestly the part with with bullet and how Hermione had to... well you read it. Blergh. Had to have a cigarette and a cup of tea after that. Was a little bit too gory a mental picture to be in my head!
So anyway, I have two things for you. Number one, I made another trailer for Victim of the Fall... Just because I felt the urge lol.
Number two, I also made a sort of tribute video to Harry Potter (which, by the way, included dubstep) also because I just felt the urge. The video is about the journey of the Big Seven, being Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, Ginny and Draco.
The links to both are on my profile page! Would love for you all to watch and tell me what you think!

xx

Desdemona