Her footsteps disappeared in the softly crashing waves as she walked in the near pitch night, most of her body shrouded in darkness, with only the pale skin of her cheeks illuminated by a crescent moon. Six years of hard work lay behind her, most of it spent in the largest libraries of the world's strongest magical communities - Britain, France, Austria, India and so on - jotting by hand the necessary passages of every important grimoire she could find for she preferred to study the information in her own wispy handwriting; early on in her search she found that many of the ancient tomes would not hold up against a mere copying spell, and anyway, any library worth its weight in gold did not take kindly to their most sought after artifices being dredged of their pricelessness in a matter of moments. All the better for Hermione Granger, who had never been one to rest on her laurels, who had revered hard work and dedication almost above a thirst for intelligence.

Almost. No one could deny that she craved power, but it was her drive to understand it, to come to her own conclusions about magic and its origins, that sent her all over the world in search of something most thought unattainable - an answer to a question as old as time itself and one that, as far as she knew, had never been answered. She needed a reason why wizards, and humans in general, lived on this planet three down from the sun, the only rock that any intelligent being called home.

Far before her days at Hogwarts she had wondered. Her parents had not been religious by any stretch of the imagination, and yet even they believed in a higher power, though they could not give it a name. But, to please the polite upstanding members of society, they and their daughter had attended church on the most important holidays - during Christmas, on Easter - and though young Hermione had been fond of Sunday school, none of her teachers had ever been able to answer her burgeoning mind.

It didn't help that she grew up with no notion of the wizarding world, with no way to explain the curious power she seemed to have that no one in her family, or in fact, in the entire world seemed to share. No one could give her a reason that her schoolteachers praised her incessantly but secretly feared her; the reason her parents spoiled their only child, and despite being completely healthy, could not have another.

Years later she recognized the effect her mysterious power had had on her parents - once she moved away from home for good and began her quest for knowledge, she had received notice from her mother that she was pregnant once again, and that Hermione - at twenty-two years of age, would finally have a sister!

She did not return the message.

Her years at Hogwarts had been defined by the same thirst for knowledge she had always known, but she had her friendships and loyalty to the staff to consider, and these wondrous new things put her ultimate quest aside for six years. She had even developed a deep affection for one of her friends, and even now in her mind's eye she could picture his smiling face and flaming red-hair as he flew - no, not on one of his beloved broomsticks, but instead as he drifted ever downward until his body crashed into the ground with an awful snap, and he lay there, his youthful face bereft of a smile.

And worse, she could remember her other best friend, the raven-haired young man who had defeated the one of the darkest evils in the world only to turn on his oldest friend and send him to his death far below the Astronomy tower. The wounds left from that day still bled crimson, and though she searched for understanding, in six years she had never understood why Harry Potter had erased life of one dark lord only to become one himself.

But now, standing on the beach of a place no one had walked in many a year, she was less than a mile away from getting her questions answered.

She took a deep breath and kept moving, her small feet gliding across the shallow waters until she reached a point where she could no longer walk; she shrugged off her dark cloak and swept her body into the black waves, swimming slowly towards a rocky outcropping jutting out of the sea no more than a hundred meters to the north. She panted against the tumultuous waters, gasping for air, but eventually she arrived at her destination.

Underneath the water she gripped her wand in her left hand and moved it against her right, slicing open her palm and smearing it against the rock. For a long time she treaded water in the jet black sea, absolutely sure that her tremors racking her muscles would not allow her to swim her way back to the shore, and regretting ever stepping forth into the water - and then suddenly the rock became an opening and allowed her entrance to a small and dark cave. She had enough energy to pull herself out of the water, but only just, for she lay breathing heavily on the cold rock for quite a while.

When she felt she had recovered enough she healed her still bleeding right hand and crawled to her knees in the cave, using her forearms to slide slowly through the cave. After a few more minutes she was able to stand up, and she took a moment to Disillusion herself with some of the strongest magic she knew.

Almost immediately she realized she had made a mistake, for she felt herself become awfully still and though she struggled to move she could not even stretch a finger - her wand dropped to the stone floor of the cavern and rolled far out of her reach. Her heart felt as if it would burst in her fear, and she moved her eyes around wildly searching for her assailant. It did not take long to find him.

Harry Potter had not changed much in the last six years - he had put on a little weight, but he was the same height she remembered from better times. At first his face was shrouded in darkness, but as he moved towards her she found that his smile was the exact same he had worn the night he killed Ron Weasley.

If she had been afraid before, now she was absolutely petrified.

"Hermione," the dark-haired man offered as a greeting. "How nice to see you."

She thought that she would not be able to speak but when her lips moved she found that she could. "You son of a bitch!" she screamed at him, though she made no move towards him. He made a slight move with his wand hand and she felt a pain in her cheek as if he had slugged her as hard as he could swing. She felt blood bubble in her mouth, but she swallowed it rather than give him the pleasure of seeing her bleed.

He laughed once and shook his head. "That's not like you at all, Hermione. Not only do you trespass on my property but you insult my mother! And to think, you used to have such disdain for Ron's bad manners-"

She screamed at him, "Don't speak his name, you bastard! You-"

She was silenced before she could continue. Harry spoke to her as if talking about the weather. "And you insult my father as well! Tut tut, that just won't do," he said. "We'll have to do something about that. You'll have to learn to respect me if we're going to be spending any more time together."

He walked over to her and stood close, caressing her cheek gently. Though she should not have been able to move, she turned her head just enough to remove his hand.

"Such fight," he laughed. "Yes. We'll have to do something about that as well. But first," he brandished his wand, "I'd like to hear your pretty little voice again."

As soon as she was able to speak she shouted, "Why did you do it, Harry? We were best friends! He, Ron was going to marry me! We were going to spend our life together." She broke into tears and sobbed heavily. "Why, Harry? Tell me why!"

Harry smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Why would I kill my best friend? Oh, I knew you were going to get married. I tried to accept it, I really did. I thought," and he tapped his temple, "Me and Ginny and Hermione and Ron, one big happy family!"

Hermione coughed and was forced to spit up blood. Harry conjured a napkin and dabbed her bloody red lips. Then he vanished it and continued. "I thought family was what I wanted most of all, back then. You know I never had one of my own. But then I realized there was something I wanted more than that, something far more difficult to obtain and much more priceless."

And in the dim light of the cavern Hermione really looked at Harry for the first time, her heart clenching at the blind obsession in his green eyes.

"You."

He moved his wand in a line down the center of her body, and she felt her clothes fall to the floor. She tried to speak, to scream at him to stop, to push him away, to kick him and beat him with her fists. But once again she was quiet and unable to move. Her vision blurred with renewed tears but she could still make out his vivid green eyes, watching hers unerringly as he entered her again and again.