Disclaimer: Only the plot is mine… Sadly.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I'd like to dedicate this chapter to lilbeth because she made my day with her sweet PM and stuff. Thank you for being all fangirly and making me feel proud of my work. :D

Hermione stopped short, a sharp pain jolting through her body that caused her to lurch backward half a step. Her eyes were wide and she let out a silent cry of pain, her hands flying to her chest.

Ron turned in less than a second to grab her desperately, his eyes alight with fear as she doubled over, her face slowly contorting to an expression of distress. "Hermione, we have to keep going. Harry…Harry's going to be fine with Voldemort," he told her, shaking her shoulders, his eyes misting over with tears as she fell to her knees.

Pain was rocketing through her body, stemming from her chest and compounding with each heartbeat. "Ron," she gasped, looking up at him but barely seeing him through her pain, her hands desperately clutching her chest, spells still rapidly flying around them. She felt it again, and her eyes were reeling back in her head. Would there be an end to this agony—the fire that suddenly began pumping through her bloodstream mid-step?

Harry had urged them to go on when he found Voldemort, telling them to find the snake and kill it. They had already come across the lifeless body of Peter Pettigrew face-down in the rubble of a wall that had crumbled to pieces, his bloodied body evidence that he was killed in the midst of the collapse.

"Hermione, please," Ron begged her, kneeling beside her, his eyes scanning her body for any indication of what had caused her suffering.

Hermione felt tears rolling down her cheeks that fell into the dust as her body subconsciously jerked at the impact of an invisible force. The image of a snake's bloodied mouth invaded her frenzied mind as it retracted, hissing before preparing to launch itself forward again. She felt her body bracing against force of its voracious, unforgiving fangs, her eyes flickering between the stark image of Nagini's gleaming ruby muzzle and Ron's sapphire eyes that sparkled with tears.

It wasn't her memory. Ron—Ron was her reality.

"Cedric," she choked out, weeping into the dirt that surrounded her in the harshness of the war. She felt his pain—his agony—as Nagini lunged again, another involuntary spasm running through her as her fangs made harsh contact with Cedric's chest. "No, no, no…" Hermione gasped, rolling and writhing on the ground, pain that wasn't hers rocketing through every fiber of her body.

All she could see was Nagini, preparing for the final lunge—she could hear his feverish, never-ending thoughts: Why aren't they helping me, Scott, Aiden, oh God, please don't let me die, please make it stop, take the pain away, there's too much blood, where are they, I feel dizzy, I can't breathe, and I'm dying, I'm dying, I'mdying—and she couldn't stop the barrage of waves upon waves of misery and red-hot suffering that had caught fire to every cell in her body.

Her vision was suddenly overtaken by bright green light and she couldn't tell if it was in her field of vision or Cedric's but everything went black just as a faint shout of, "He's dead!" reverberated throughout her eardrums.

Hermione stretched, feeling extremely lethargic. She opened her eyes as tranquility washed over her, blinking a few times before slowly looking around. She was floating in blackness, a lonely ship in an endless sea of nothingness. The tiredness dripped slowly into her bloodstream like an IV ejecting medicine into her veins, and her heavy-lidded eyes roamed over her surroundings.

She reached out and grasped at the emptiness before her, peace enveloping her like an old friend. She felt her eyelids droop with exhaustion because she really was quite sleepy. If she could just close her eyes for only a moment, surely she would feel more energy than she currently did…

"Hermione."

She opened her eyes curiously, the word that the strangely familiar voice whispered floating through her head on repeat. Hermione. Hermione, Hermione, Hermione.

She felt a tingle in her chest, a sensation of recognition. What was so special about the word? Her-my-oh-nee.

She spoke suddenly, her own voice startling her. "That's my name," she acknowledged softly, remembering the fact.

"Hermione," the voice said again, louder this time, and she turned around slowly.

She found herself staring through a hole in a tree, a smile overtaking her face as sunlight snuck its way through to warm the parts of her face it could reach, not the least bit alarmed by the change in scenery as she turned to check behind herself to find that she was crouching inside the small, dark enclosure of the tree.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are…" Hermione held her breath to keep from giggling, her heart pounding as she watched the tall, brown-haired boy peer around a tree on the other side of the clearing. The sun bathed everything in a golden glow, the blades of grass almost appearing as though they had been crafted out of the precious metal.

A pair of bright blue eyes sprang up right in front of her, widening before a laugh sounded. "I found her, guys!"

Hermione sighed half-heartedly as she moved out of her hiding place, fighting back her grin as she said, "Andrew, I think you cheated."

The accused boy's eyes widened in mock-surprise before his face straightened into a self-righteous expression. "I'll have you know that I played fair and square."

"You know I'd never let him cheat, Hermione," a female voice laughed. Hermione looked over and saw Naomi walking toward them, her short bob swishing around her face with each step.

Andrew reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her close and pressing a teasing kiss to her nose. "Goody two-shoes," he grumbled, causing both girls to laugh.

Hermione turned when she heard leaves rustling and saw another figure emerge from the foliage. "I thought I found a great hiding spot, but I guess it wasn't that great," Cho Chang said, brushing her long dark hair over her shoulder as she stepped into the sunlight. She was smiling and shaking her head. "Naomi found me," she informed them, pointing a playfully accusing finger at the guilty teenager.

Naomi shrugged. "What can I say? I have a gift."

Hermione's heart was filled with more joy than she could express as her eyes flitted between the three faces. She hadn't spent enough time with them, but that was something she would change. It was times like this that made her realize how important it was to maintain friendships with people she cared about. In the back of her mind as her eyes drifted back to Cho, who was focused on brushing pieces of grass off of her skirt, she felt like there was something that used to make her dislike the girl, but she couldn't think of it for the life of her.

"Let's go again!" Hermione exclaimed excitedly, ultimately deciding that it was unimportant. All that mattered was that they were all together and having fun. "I'll be it this time." She went over to a tree to begin counting, hearing the giggles and whispers of her friends as they began scrambling to find places to hide.

"Hermione," a voice whispered, startling her out of her counting.

She recognized the voice but couldn't place who it belonged to. "Hello?" She said, squinting into the tangle of trees beyond the clearing to find the unidentified person.

A hand grasped hers, making her jump and turn toward it just as someone emerged from the shadows behind the very tree she had been counting in front of. A tall boy with soft brown hair stood before her, his gray eyes staring imploringly at her as they appeared to search her face. "You shouldn't be here," Cedric murmured, his brows knitting together.

Hermione opened her mouth to respond but found herself suddenly with a mouthful of water. She blinked and twisted about to find that she was fully submerged in dark water. She looked up, holding her breath, and saw a white reflection gleaming on the waves above. She kicked her feet as hard as she could, using her arms to further propel herself toward the surface. Her lungs burned as she neared it, gasping for air as she broke the surface and pushing her drenched hair out of her face.

It was dark outside except for the full moon and the faint light that the stars provided, and she couldn't see land from where she was currently floating. She turned around in the water, kicking her feet to keep her head afloat, and gave a sigh of relief when she saw a boat drifting in the middle of the waves. She couldn't see who the fisherman was—she saw a fishing pole extending from the boat with a line that disappeared into the water—but she knew that she physically couldn't stay in the water forever without tiring her muscles out.

She swam toward the boat, which appeared to be a small, wooden lifeboat. She noticed as she neared it that it was painted white, which made it gleam brightly in the moonlight. As she approached the side of the boat, she saw a solitary hooded figure perched on the wooden bench holding the fishing rod steady.

"Excuse me," Hermione said, coughing when water sloshed into her mouth, "but may I sit in your boat with you? There's no land anywhere else in sight."

The hooded figure turned toward her. "Of course," a pleasant female voice responded, a pale hand extending toward Hermione to assist her as she gratefully pulled herself aboard.

"Thank you," Hermione said as she settled onto the bench, surprised when she found the weather outside the water to be pleasantly warm. The woman nodded beneath her hood and turned back to her fishing. Hermione watched curiously as the woman sat motionlessly, patiently waiting for something to bite the line.

"Would you like to try?" The woman asked, offering Hermione the fishing pole.

Hermione raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Uh, sure," she said, accepting it and staring where the line disappeared beneath the water. She noticed that there were no waves, the water sitting as motionlessly as the woman. A ripple ran across the liquid as Hermione shifted on the bench to get a better view of the line.

"You'd be surprised what you can catch with that."

Hermione jumped, looking at the woman whose face was shadowed by her hood. The material of her cloak was made of what looked like woven silver that sparkled in the moonlight. "Really?"

A melodic laugh emerged from the cloak. "I think you'll have better luck than me, though," she said, glossing over Hermione's question.

"What makes you say that?" Hermione asked, her attention fully diverted from the fishing pole that was grasped between her slippery hands.

The mysterious fisherwoman pulled her hood back to reveal a beautiful porcelain-skinned face framed by long, white-blonde hair. Her ice blue eyes pierced through Hermione, striking a sense of familiarity inside of her. She felt like she had met this woman before, but she didn't know how that was possible. "Isn't it fascinating how the stars are reflected on the water?" The woman asked her, pulling Hermione from her thoughts.

Hermione's gaze moved to the stagnant water that reflected the sky like a mirror. She could see each star perfectly on the surface of the water, each round, luminous circle of light appearing as though they were shards of diamonds scattered across it. The moon was strangely not reflecting off the water, but for some reason, it didn't bother Hermione. "Yes," she mused, "it is."

The fishing pole suddenly twitched in her hands, causing Hermione to snap out of her reverie and tug on it, watching as the line stretched taut. Whatever it was that she had caught looked like it was going to be difficult to reel in. "Let's see what you caught," the woman suggested, her voice floating in the air between them as though it were composed of lilting music notes.

Hermione nodded her acknowledgement and began to reel in the line, her eyes focused on the water for any indication of what it was going to be. She pulled on the fishing pole to ensure that whatever was hooked at the end of the line wouldn't let go, reeling in the line as fast as she could. She stared in surprise as the hook emerged, plunged through a glistening star.

"Hurry, before it gets away," the woman said, and Hermione reached out to unhook it. As soon as her hand made contact with the glowing ball of light, warmth shot up her fingers and her eyesight was overcome by a flash of whiteness that reminded her of her parents taking a picture of her with the flash on.

A million feelings shot through her as the light filled her being, her nerve endings singing as a tingling sensation ran up and down her spine. Happiness, comfort, power, joy, fear, sadness, excitement—every emotion in existence coursed through her body, dissipating as the light began dimming away from her vision and leaving her with a sense of warmness that sat pleasantly in her stomach as she found herself still sitting in the boat.

"It's not yours, you know," the woman told her. Hermione looked at her, confused. The woman laughed, looking out at the reflection of the stars on the water again. "There's so many of them, but of course only that one would choose you."

Hermione looked at the empty hook that was dangling in front of her before looking at the woman, still struggling to figure out how she knew her. "What do you mean?"

"I tried holding onto it, but it refused to be contained," the woman mused. She turned to Hermione. "Yours, his—I remember the star they were born from. It's not often that it happens that way, one star giving forth two, but when I took it apart, the two pieces always seemed to find a way to drift together."

Hermione couldn't make sense of the woman's gibberish, but sat silently in the hopes that perhaps she would be able to if she continued speaking.

The woman reached over the side of the boat and plucked one of the stars right off the water, holding the orb in one hand. "Magic is an interesting, unpredictable thing."

Author's Note: This chapter was the product of a lot of spur-of-the-moment ideas that hit me all at once. I actually gave myself a cool idea for a book thanks to this—building off of the whole concept of stars being more than just random balls of light—but we'll see where that goes from here.

Everything is getting weird now, isn't it? I started writing this chapter five minutes after finishing the new Romeo and Juliet movie starring Douglass Booth (my love…it killed me to see him in pain) so it turned out a lot darker than I originally intended it to be. I like it, though, and I think it adds a lot more direction to the ending (which is coming up in the next chapter or two). I wrote the first half of this chapter through a river of tears.

Tell me what you think, guyssss. That would be awesome. I love you and I'll see you soon. :)

-Caitlyn