Disclaimer: If you really are that curious about whether or not I really own any of this, go to the first chapter. Which you should have read anyway! Slacker!

Hermione waited until she was well past where Professor Lupin could see her, and then she pulled over to the side of the road, rested her head on the steering wheel, and tried her hardest to cry.

She'd read somewhere that crying was an all-natural way to release pent-up emotion. That was, apparently, why men were such rubbish at coping with feelings.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was scared enough to cry. She was being asked to journey to a foreign country, to an isolated community that was filled with all the Dark Wizards in Europe, where there would be at least a few wizards who'd recognize her as the former best mate of Harry Potter.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

She was sad enough to cry, as well.

Of course,technically, none of the three were actually dead.

Harry was as good as. He might even actually be dead. She didn't know. She hadn't seen or heard anything from him since she watched him walk away from the final battle, the body of his fallen nemesis lying huddled on the ground behind him. That had hurt her, almost more then anything else that had happened. Obviously because she'd felt abandoned, but also because he'd been able to just walk away and never look back. She'd tried, oh, she'd tired so hard to just forget that any of it had ever happened. To just live as if the words 'magic' and 'wizard' were just words from fairy-tales. She felt sorry for Harry as well. For him to tear himself away from all of them… he must have been so… so… tired.

Hermione was alive, as well. Obviously.

And Ron was alive. The Mediwitch who looked after him had told Hermione that he showed great improvement, and was beginning to respond subtly to light and sound. It was progress. He had seemed like a corpse for the past six years, but there was color coming to his face, and sometimes his eyes would briefly flicker underneath his eyelashes. This was something. The Weasleys desperately needed a 'something' to focus on.

And even thinking about Ron couldn't make her cry. She gently pounded on the wheel with her forehead as the headlights from a passing car swung over her face.

Hermione was tired, and she looked it. Her bushy brown hair was tied away from her face into a loose bun that spilled curls down to her shoulders, and she had the cautious, hunched look of someone who hadn't had a really solid meal in much too long.

She was surviving. She was working, and she was interacting with people. She saw this as a major accomplishment. She tried to talk to people as much as possible. She's seen survivors who'd closed themselves off completely. And she had been close. She'd come close to that often. More often that she'd care to admit. It would have been very easy to just slide back. But she'd thought about it, and felt that she would be backing out if she gave up. It would've felt like cheating. And it wasn't an escape from pain, really. It just trapped you in your memories of the past, until you'd forgotten who you were, and all you knew was that horrible gut-wrenching sense of loss.

She gave up trying to cry, and leaned back in her seat, thinking. She hadn't really grasped what she was being asked to do yet. She knew that she was going to go to a northern country that was home to a horde of (alleged) villains. She was going to spy. She'd never have associated herself with that word. It was something out of old movies, not things that happened to her. Ever. But she was going to do it. The notebook was heavy in her pocket, the small prism dangling from the mirror whirled wildly and winked little rays of light into her eyes.

She needed to go home. She needed to think, to pack, and to sleep.