Chapter 1

July 5th 1999

It had been exactly 429 days since the final, permanent downfall of Lord Voldemort. 429 days since Hogwarts had held host to the biggest, most bloody battle in living memory. 429 days since the side of light and good had won that battle. 429 days since they had lost so many friends and loved ones.

Including Ron.

Hermione woke up, as she had fully come to expect, breathless and tangled in sheets that were soaked through with her own sweat. 429 nights of the same terrifying, vivid nightmare. The same memories flashing back to her, haunting her dreams and forcing her to relive the very worst moment of her life. Her hair was drenched and stuck to her neck and back, causing her to shiver in the cool morning breeze that entered through her bedroom window as she lay, trying to breathe herself out of her state of panic. She groaned as she fought her way out of her self-made cocoon and glanced at the clock, seeing that it was 5:30. With a sigh, she pushed herself up and swivelled her legs around to perch on the side of her bed. She had no idea why she even bothered to set an alarm any more, her nightmares always woke her long before it ever could.

Standing, she stretched her arms above her head and groaned as she tilted her upper body, twisting it slightly to the right and breathing a sigh of relief as her back cracked audibly. It cracked once more when she performed the same action, only this time moving to the left. She had been meaning to take up yoga during her downtime in the evenings in order to try and ease the strain that her solo night-time fights put on her back, but thus far they had been taken up with fighting the urge to sleep, forcing herself to stay awake and work on extra duties that Kingsley had no need for or otherwise reading books that she had read a million times over already. With a deep sigh, she took her first step of the day and dragged herself towards her bathroom, hoping that a shower would invigorate her for the day but knowing that it wouldn't. It never did.

Flicking on the light as she stepped in, Hermione blinked, blinded by the sudden brightness that surrounded her. The bathroom was stark and white, not a hint of warmness or homeliness. Bright white wall tiles met with bright white floor tiles, the white shower curtain matched with the white blinds at the window. Even her towels and toothbrush were white. Everything was so bright and stark, a harsh contrast to the darkness and muddled thoughts that filled her head nearly constantly. This was the reason that she had spent the last year working so hard, so relentlessly; during her work was the only time that her mind was able to focus on something other than the crushing guilt she felt at all other times. While she was filling out forms and researching for Kingsley's upcoming official visits to foreign Ministries, she could forget the very thing that she was so desperate to escape. If only for a while.

After turning on the shower and waiting a few seconds to allow the water to heat up to her preferred nearly scalding temperature, she lifted her left leg over the side of the bath and placed it inside. This was not an easy task; her legs felt like lead at the best of times and she had to hold on to the shower pipes in order to steady herself as her right leg followed suit. The pipes should have burned to touch, but Hermione had long lost the ability to recognise the discomfort - on the contrary, it almost soothed her. It reminded her that she could still feel something, anything other than fear or guilt. As the nearly boiling water began cascading down her back, she allowed herself a sigh as she tipped her head back and allowed the artificial rain to fall on her face. She wished it would wash her sins away, take her misery and allow the drain to swallow it. The all consuming nothingness that she felt had been such a heavy burden to bear, one that she bore alone through her own choice.

After the battle, she had walked up and down the length of the Great Hall many, many times as she tried to comprehend the sheer number of corpses and walking wounded that surrounded her. Tonks and Remus had laid side by side, their hands placed together by someone who had obviously felt they needed to display their love for the world to see, even in death. Snape, whose body Harry had retrieved and placed, almost pride of place, among the bodies of those who belonged to the light. Lavender, who Hermione had never been particularly close with but whose death hurt her nonetheless. Colin Creevey, who had once again returned to Harry's side, so loyal and steadfast. Each body, each needless death, left her feeling a little more broken inside, but none could have hurt her more than the one red-headed corpse that lay among them, surrounded by more red-heads who looked as broken for the world to see as she felt internally. As far as Hermione was concerned, her body should have been where his was and his family should still be complete.

It was this guilt that crushed her, buried her under it's weight and threatened to swallow her whole if she would only allow it to. She hadn't been able to meet the eyes of the Weasley family as they beckoned for her to join them in their grief. She had ignored Harry's shouts as she had simply turned and, chin tucked to her chest and her own arms wrapped around, walked from the Great Hall and she had not stopped walking. Her legs carried her away from the destroyed battlements of Hogwarts, out of the marred and scorched grounds and even as far as Hogsmeade before she dared to allow her brokenness to show on her face. Even then, the weight of what she had just witnessed burned in her chest and as she collapsed in the street outside a destroyed cottage, she had found that she wasn't capable of crying. Not a single tear escaped her eyes, though she wished they would. If she could only cry, perhaps some of her guilt could be washed away and she could begin the process of healing from the trauma.

Her actions since that day had only added to her guilt as the letters, each unopened and placed in a box that she kept hidden in her closet, piled up. She'd lost count of how many owls arrived at her flat and proceeded to leave empty handed, flying back to wherever they had originated. Her isolation felt like her recompense for what she had allowed to happen, what she felt she had caused to happen. She had spent the last 429 days hiding herself from the world, only leaving her flat in order to floo to the Ministry every day, complete her work and then bring more home with her in the evening. She didn't speak to anyone that didn't absolutely require her attention and even then, she only said as little as she felt she could get away with. She awoke, she worked, she had her nightmares and then she awoke to start the process all over again. This had been her life for over a year and she was miserable, but she knew that this was her sentence for her crime. The crime that was robbing the Weasley family of their youngest son.

After doing the bare minimum that she usually did in the shower, Hermione silently turned off the shower and allowed herself to stand, drip drying, in the bath. She felt no reason to hurry, no pressing desire to leave the sanctuary of her shower and face yet another day. The water gathered at the ends of her hair, uncut and rarely brushed since the battle, forming droplets that fell and either rolled down her back or simply splashed into nothing as they hit the ceramic bathtub below her. She slowly turned her eyes downwards, watching as the water droplets seemed to disappear as they hit, wishing she could do the same. She held a morbid thought, wondering what it would be like to disappear completely, then grunted as she shook her head weakly. She couldn't allow herself to think like that; this was her prison, her punishment. She did not deserve to take the easy way out. With a small sigh, she lifted her heavy arms and reached for a towel, pulling it into the space above the bath and wrapping it around herself. It felt scratchy against her skin, a far cry from the soft fluffy towels her mother had used to keep. She shook this thought away too; she absolutely could not let herself think about her parents.

She staggered sluggishly into her bedroom, grimacing as she saw the disaster that had become of her bedsheets before turning to her closet and pulling open the doors. Before her hung the many business suits that she wore to work every day; all of them black, none of them with any frills or needless decoration. This was the only reflection for the outside world to see of the darkness that haunted her. During her first days at the Ministry, after she had reluctantly succumbed to Kingsley's relentless pleas that she become his assistant, Hermione had fit right in with the others who worked there. During the official mourning period for their dead, everyone had worn only black as a show of their united grief. It had been Kingsley's idea; some vague notion about showing those who remained free from Voldemort's side that the Wizarding World stood united against them. Even then and despite her misery, she had thought it ironic that they chose to wear something so similar to that which the death eaters had worn, but she had kept her thoughts on the matter to herself, as she usually found herself doing these days. Then when the rest of the Ministry had begun to move on and slowly added more colour into the halls, she had not. She was, after all, still mourning. She didn't think she would ever stop doing so.

After dressing and pulling her still-wet hair up into the same tight bun she always did, she picked up her wand from the bedside table and performed the same well-practised cleansing charm that she cast on her bed every morning. Though she tended to do things the muggle way at home, she knew that she lacked the energy to do laundry in such a fashion and this charm meant that she never needed to worry about the cleanliness of her sheets. It was the one small comfort that she had allowed herself. After tucking her wand up into her sleeve, she dragged herself out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. She wasn't hungry, she couldn't remember the last time she had experienced anything even close to hunger, but she still moved to open the cupboards out of habit. Each door opened to reveal bare shelves, aside from half eaten bags of pasta that were well past their use-by date by now. Opening the fridge only revealed more of the same emptiness, aside from the one self-refilling water jug that stood alone in the middle. Sighing, she pulled it out and plucked a similarly lonely glass from the draining board, filling it with water before replacing the jug in the fridge. Closing the door, she turned and leaned back against the worktop, glass in hand as she looked around her small flat.

The one main room was sparsely furnished, bare and far from homely. The biggest piece of furniture was an old, uncomfortable sofa that sat in the middle of the space. An ugly shade of yellow and well-worn, though not by her. She had never spent any time on it, having purchased it for next to nothing in some back alley charity shop somewhere in the east end of muggle London. It had been one of the last times she had dared to venture outside, ending up in her having a panic attack due to the hustle and bustle of the city. So now this tatty sofa sat there, taunting her with another example of her failure. Beside the sofa, where she supposed there might usually have been a side table or pouffe, was a stack of cardboard boxes, yet to even be opened let alone unpacked. They contained the memories from before the battle, before the world had lost him, before she had committed her defining sin. There were no cushions or blankets or even curtains; Hermione wouldn't allow herself such comforting luxuries. Her desk sat in the corner next to the fireplace, in front of the only sign that anyone even lived in this space at all; her books. The shelves stretched from floor to ceiling and were sagging under the weight of the knowledge held within the pages. This little square that held her shelves and books was where Hermione spent all of her time in her flat when she wasn't asleep.

After slowly sipping perhaps only a quarter of the cup of water, Hermione twisted and poured the rest down the drain before rinsing the glass and placing it back in the same position she had picked it up from. Glancing at her clock, she sighed when she found that it was still only 6:30, long before she was due into work at 9:00, but desperate for distraction she decided to go in early and gain a headstart on that day's to-do list. Not that there was much of one; she'd done most of the work the previous evening and she knew that Kingsley didn't have any foreign visits impending so in fact what she needed to do was very little. But, as always, she would find something to occupy her time and her mind; anything was better than allowing it to dwell on the things that kept her fighting the urge to go to sleep. She slowly pushed herself away from the counter and moved into the living room, bending down with a groan to slip her feet into her old and battered shoes. They were not comfortable, there had been holes in the soles for longer than she cared to remember and had lost their shine long before that. Her toes pinched together at the ends and her feet ached at the end of every day, but she had no intention of buying new ones. There was no point, she didn't deserve them anyway. When she was ready, she crossed to the fireplace and dipped her fingers into the pot of floo powder - the only thing that decorated her mantlepiece - before stepping into the hearth, mustering as much strength as she could and calling out for the Ministry as she threw it down at her feet and disappeared.