A/N: Everything you recognize does not belong to me. Please read and review!

Later, they gathered around a campfire and Hermione sat and stared pensively at the flames while the dwarves were being their usually rowdy selves. Kili and Fili plopped on either side of her.

"Can you tell us more about your home?" Kili asked. "Like how you came to Middle Earth?"

They had guessed that Hermione and her blonde companion were not of this world by the way they spoke of their magical school and homeland. Thorin had taught Fili and Kili much about Middle Earth and it's surrounding lands, but they have never heard of a place called Scotland, nor Hogwarts.

Hermione hesitated. She knew that once she began her tale, her emotions would become uncontrollable. But she felt that this was something she needed to move on from. Her eyes flickered to Draco who had a stoic look on his face as he stared back.

"Come, Master Dwarves," Hermione began. "Let me tell you a story."

Other dwarves had gathered around curiously when they heard that she would be telling a story.

"It begins, I suppose with a boy. This boy grew up in a Muggle, that means non-magic, orphanage. His father had rejected him and his mother before he was born, and his mother had died giving birth to him. But not before she gave him a name. His name was Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Tom Riddle grew up and discovered that he was different from the other children. He could do things that no one could explain. He hurt and scared the other children. The when he was eleven, a wizard named Albus Dumbledore came and whisked him off to a magical school, where he saw that it was quite normal to be different. He learned all sorts of magic, and lapped all the knowledge up hungrily. But soon he began to delve into the branches of Dark Magic. Before he graduated, he had already tortured, murdered, and instilled much fear amongst some of the students. He began his conquest of immortality by creating horcruxes. To make a horcrux you must split your soul and place it into an object, thus if your body is killed, your soul will survive.

After he graduated, Tom Riddle disappeared and became Lord Voldemort. He gathered himself followers name Death Eaters who wanted to bring the pure-blooded witches and wizards out of hiding, and enslave and kill all the non-magic folk, mudbloods." Hermione spat and rolled up her sleeve revealing the word carved crudely into her arm.

"He steadily grew in power and everyone feared him. He could not be stopped. And then, another boy was born," Hermione's eyes softened. "His name, was Harry Potter."

"Voldemort heard of a prophecy foretelling that his baby boy would have the power to defeat him. So when Harry was just a little older than one year old, Voldemort hunted him down to kill him. He started with Harry's dad. Voldemort gave Harry's mum the chance to step aside, to live, but she refused. And when Lily Potter sacrificed herself for her son, she gave him a protection that ran within him, ensuring that Voldemort would not be able to touch him." Hermione saw out of the corner of her eyes that Thorin, Balin, and Bilbo had returned from their talk with Elrond.

"But because of his horcruxes, Voldemort didn't die when his Killing Curse rebounded. He simply was too weak to carry on. Baby Harry was sent to live with his aunt and uncle who were cruel and mistreated him, until on his eleventh birthday, a giant named Hagrid introduced Harry to the magical world of his parents. Here Harry was famous, here he was the Boy-Who-Lived." She declared.

"At Hogwarts, Harry befriended the ginger haired boy who loved sweets and Wizard's Chess, Ron. And a bushy haired girl who always had her nose stuck in a book, me." She small smile danced across her lips.

"He chose these two misfits over any rich, popular, pure-blood when they also offered their friendship," She eyed Malfoy who had a grumpy look on his face. "Like Draco Malfoy."

Some dwarves glanced at Malfoy's red face and chortled a bit, then refocused their attention on Hermione. "So the three friends got themselves into all sorts of trouble. They faced three-headed dogs, giant chess sets, deadly potions, Voldemort himself latched onto the back of a professors head in their first year."

"In their second year, Harry bravely battled a basilisk which can kill you the instant you look into its eyes to save Ginny, Ron's little sister, and the future love of Harry's life."

"In our third year, Harry discovered that he had a godfather, and we traveled back in time to save a hippogriff and Sirius, Harry's godfather. But the man who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort had escaped."

"All this time, we had heard of Voldemort, battled some bits of his soul and memory, but his presence was never really real. That all changed in our fourth year. He found a way to come back, and then, the danger became very real."

"Our fifth year was filled with teenage rebellion. The ministry was too cowardly to admit to the wizarding world that their greatest fears had returned, so they denied everything and passed Harry off as a liar." Hermione continued angrily. "We gathered together a teenage group and Harry taught us what it was like to truly face Voldemort. Sirius died that year, he was killed by his own cousin."

"In sixth year, Dumbledore revealed the key to truly defeating Voldemort. We had to destroy his horcruxes. Harry and Dumbledore tried to find one, but Dumbledore…died." Hermione shot a quick glance towards Malfoy and found him staring into the fire with a guilty look on his face. She decided not to linger on this topic and continued hastily.

"And finally, in what would have been our seventh year, Harry, Ron, and I left Hogwarts to search for the horcruxes and to destroy them. Evil threatened to tear us apart, and it nearly did. But our friendship and love for one another overcame these boundaries. We found and destroyed one horcrux before we were captured and taken to Malfoy Manor." The air was quiet and everyone turned towards Malfoy, who steadily met Hermione's eyes.

"I'm not proud of what happened." His voice scratched against his throat and his eyes were indeed filled with regret. "They took the three to my house and my aunt, who was bloodthirsty and mad, had me identify them. I was a Death Eater and in my sixth year was given the task of murdering Dumbledore. I couldn't do it. He was right, Dumbledore, I am no murderer. So when they brought these three in front of me I said I did not recognize them. Which was a lie of course, anyone who had two eyes could see that it was obviously Potter and his two lackeys. But they tortured Hermione." Draco closed his eyes letting the image of her lying on the ground at Bellatrix's feet burn into his eyelids. Her screams were filling his ears and ripping at his eardrums.

"None of you know the pain that can be inflicted at one word. Like knives slicing at your flesh, but not being about to bleed. Being burned without catching fire. And they did it to her. Over and over. Enough to make any grown wizard lose their sanity ten times over. And I could do nothing to stop it." Malfoy spat bitterly.

The dwarves listened with wide eyes to what these two young humans, who were barely of age, recount the horrors of what life had brought upon them. Even Thorin listened to their bitter retellings with fervor.

"But you did save me." Hermione whispered to Malfoy. "Draco let a house-elf by the name Dobby into the manor, and Dobby saved us. But not before Bellatrix threw her silver dagger and killed him." Hermione felt the tears rising up within her.

"We found one more horcrux and again, barely escaped. This time on the back of a dragon." The dwarves shifted in their seats at the mention of the dragon.

"The final horcrux was at Hogwarts. When we got there, Voldemort knew, and his armies now marched upon Hogwarts. This was the Final Battle. Harry made his stand against Voldemort. We thought that all his Horcruxes had been destroyed, but we were wrong. That night when Voldemort sought out Baby Harry and tried to kill him, a piece of his soul latched itself onto Harry's body. He killed Ron." Hermione's voice broke and now tears were streaming down her face.

"He turned on me," she whispered and shuddered involuntarily as those hate filled eyes that were Harry's but were so different, burned itself into her mind. Kili placed his arm around her comfortingly as she struggled to continue telling her tale. But she couldn't as heart-wrenching sobs tore through her as all her repressed memories came back to her. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of grief, as waves constantly knocked her over, dragging her down, choking her.

The dwarves were silent. The girl who was naught but a child had endured so much pain and had witnessed too much death. And yet she remained strong, helping them and protecting them when they had run from the orcs.

"That's why I'm helping you lot." Hermione addressed the dwarves. "Because you have lost so much as well, your home. No one should lose their home and family. Their sense of belonging. Like me and Draco here I s'pose."

"You will have a home with us," Bofur said comfortingly. "Mahal knows you, out of all of us deserve it the most."

No one disagreed. "Aye, lass," Balin smiled at her.

Hermione sniffled and nodded her head gratefully. But she was fighting a fierce battle within herself. Who was she to live in such luxury, when her friends had died bravely defending a cause they knew was hopeless, especially in those last few moments. Yet they fought, and Hermione, all she had done was run. Like a coward.

"Granger," Malfoy's voice cut through her mental self-loathing. "Don't overthink it. Potter and Weasley would have wanted this for you. You do deserve it, regardless of what you think."

With thoughts and memories swimming in her mind, the fire crackling warmly, and Kil's arm still wrapped around her shoulders, she drifted off into a fitful sleep.