A/N: I just wanted to say thank you for all the well wishes. It's been a hard few days and it sucks being the one that has to stay strong for everyone else, but being a mom, you do what you have to do and hang in while children mourn for their Grandma.

As for the story, this chapter is short and not a lot happens, so it's basically a filler chapter. The good news is, this filler chapter opens up a few more so I'm thinking the story has another 5 chapters before it is finished. I didn't want to get them together and end the story… I guess I wanted it to go a little beyond that. I'm going to start on the next chapter as soon as this one is posted so it should be up in a few hours.

Dumbledore smiled happily, as Minerva put it, like the cat that got the cream. He had felt the wards he placed up finally dissolve and he hoped that there would finally be some peace in the castle, well, until Severus, Lucius, and Hermione came for his head.

He had hoped it could have been resolved without such… dirty tactics, and Merlin knows the schools governors would have been in a right state if they had learned that he had drugged two professors, not to mention the fact that he had also drugged a student. Minor details in his opinion.

The important thing to him was that there had obviously been some sort of resolution, now he just hoped it was for the better.

As he continued to smile, Minerva grew impatient, "Are you going to tell me exactly what it is that you have done that has made you smile like some sort of… love sick child?"

Dumbledore laughed, "Let's just say that Harry Potter wasn't the only one with a prophecy."

Minerva raised an eyebrow, "Have you been dabbling in Severus's liquor again? You know it doesn't do well by you."

"Nonsense," he said with a smile, "The liquor doesn't bother me as much as you think it does." Dumbledore sighed and stood, walking over to a shelf behind him where he reached into a cleverly hidden niche and pulled out a small glass ball, "I acquired this prophecy some time ago, but at the time I received it, I thought it was a fluke because of the individuals involved. I haven't told anyone because of that reason. But as time has passed, well, it's impossible to mistake it for anything other than real."

"What are you getting at albus?" Minerva asked, really unsure of what was going on.

He placed the ball in her hand."Oh come now, I would be able to see it – it's not about me!"

"You are correct, it isn't about you, however, as second in command of this school and considering it involves people from Hogwarts – exceptions are made."

Minerva nodded and placed her second hand on the prophecy, still not believing she would hear anything. She waited for a few tense minutes and was just about to hand it back when she heard the beginning of a wispy voice.

"One of white, one of black, one of grey. The union of three will bring forth a new day. With evil defeated and bloodlines depleted, together they show us the way."

The voice left the room just as suddenly as it had appeared and Minerva was speechless. Was it possible?

"Hermione, Severus, and Lucius?" She asked

Dumbledore simply nodded.

Hermione woke up felling at peace, more so than she had felt in a long time. She glanced over to see Lucius fast asleep on one side and Severus asleep on the other.

Not moving too much, she took the opportunity to look at them, to really, really look at them. They were not old, not by any means, but they had matured greatly from when she first became friends with them. Their boyish looks were gone and had been replaced with the looks of men who had been through far more than they ever should have. But they were still them. She could see both men had scars on their bodies that were not on their younger selves and on their forearms, a large black tattoo that screamed out against her kind.

Seeing the tattoos, she should have been terrified, but she felt oddly at peace with them. It reminded her that they were in fact human beings that had made decisions in their lives, for the good or for the bad, it just didn't matter anymore.

Their lives had all been so twisted and all because of one man, a man who would be rolling in his grave if he could see two of his most loyal followers, laying in bed and cuddled up to a mudblood, well, if he had a grave.

She sighed and looked up to the ceiling. Voldemort had really reached into the lives of everyone, even children. She, Harry, and Ron should have had normal childhoods where the biggest worry was puberty and the opposite sex, not facing death at every turn or going on the run looking for soul fragments… but if not for Voldemort, she may have never ended up with Severus and Lucius, hell, if anything had gone wrong when Harry defeated Voldemort, Severus and Lucius might have regained their memories only to learn that Voldemort had taken something else from them, her.

She shook her head, there was no changing the past and as her mother had always told her 'everything happens for a reason whether we understand the reason or not'

"You're thinking too much again." Severus stated as he tried to shove his arm under the blanket to hide the tattoo from her sight. It bothered him that she was even looking at the bloody thing.

Hermione reached out to stop him, "It doesn't bother me, there is no need to hide it."

Severus shook his head, "It should have never been there in the first place."

Hermione turned on her side and scooted closer to him. She placed her head on his chest and draped her leg over his, "It doesn't matter anymore, none of that does… it's all in the past."

Severus was not normally a person that worried what anyone thought. The tattoo, the scars, it was part of his life but with her, he wished she never saw that part of his life.