Gravestones

So many gravestones, so many new gravestones. She should not have come, but her sleep was broken with memories, memories of laughter, memories of screaming. Flashes of light that dissolved into sunlight that was not entirely welcome. At least her friends were still alive in her dreams. At least she could sometimes save them. At least they smiled at her while they haunted.

And she always came when they called her, no matter how high the risk or how much Remus protested her leaving the underground, no matter how strange she felt when she returned, no matter that there was a price on her head as high as Harry's had been before he smiled with the others in her dreams. Remus held her when she came back, shaking, with red eyes but stainless face. He stroked her hair until she would rise from the couch and go to the room she shared with four other people. She would hide behind bed curtains and sleep with her friends. Remus worried about her.

She avoided the newly turned graves. There were names she recognized, more names that she did not. But she knew where to go, her rounds to the places no one else was allowed to go, plain graves with great names. She always walked from one side of the graveyard to the other, taking an entire afternoon and into the evening. She hid when she felt the presence of others. There had been near misses, but she was never caught. She was able to find her friends, find those names that were not allowed to be spoken, trace the letters with a loving finger, whisper those forbidden names, one by one... Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody... so many graves, so much green grass growing over the gray earth.

She did not weep. She could only watch the way the cloudy sky gleamed on the field of gravestones, extending past her sight down the roll of the hill. She could only watch the shadows shift and drift. She felt the oppressive weight of the clouds as the light darkened about her. She knew she should go, that there would be guards to patrol for the last Order members who might come uncover of night. But she was not ready to leave. Each day passing through the gravestones made it harder to leave, harder to return to the underground and continue to live without hope.

It was no surprise, or even frightening, when she heard her name.

"Hermione Granger."

She did not turn around.

"Lord Voldemort." She touched the grave before her, the grave of Ginny Weasley. "Am I so important to you that you would come yourself?"

A hand touched her hair, threading fingers through the locks.

"I would never miss your lovely company, Miss Granger, not after the run you gave us." With a gentle pull, he brushed her jaw and guided her to face him. "I admire that you managed to evade us for so long. But you came here too many times too regularly."

She saw movement with the shadows, cloaks, white masks like moving marble draped with black fabric. Death Eaters. So many of them. Yet she was not afraid, and when she saw Voldemort taste the air, she knew had no satisfaction.

"Miss Granger, you are surrounded. The underground from which you came has been found and its inhabitants taken." Voldemort stepped back, relinquishing her face but holding it with his crimson eyes. "We ask of you what we ask all traitors of our new order. Will you join us? Or will you die for a cause that no longer exists? Consider carefully, Miss Granger. The world has fallen to me. I have the power that I always searched for. And you can have your life, everything that you love in life you can keep. You will not be condemned for your blood or your previous allegiances."

"You kill all that I love," she said. "And I will not join you."

He circled her as the Death Eaters surrounded them. "You cling to ghosts, Miss Granger," he murmured. "You still live. Will you throw that away?"

"There is nothing left," she whispered, falling to the ground and clinging to the gravestone. "Take my life if you want it. It is of no value to me."

"Despair does not become you."

"If there were no reason to despair, I would not," she replied, looking up at him. "But as you have said, you won. So do what you will, my lord."

Voldemort reached within his robes and drew out his wand.

"I want to see your eyes when you die," he said, the scarlet of his own eyes glittering even in the dying light. "I want to want the vaunted Hermione Granger's soul leave her body."

Her finger clutched more tightly to the gravestone and she bared her teeth. "I promised you my life, Lord Voldemort, but you will not have my soul."

"One more butterfly," he murmured, sliding his wand under her chin and into the hollow of her throat.

She thought of Harry and Remus and storms before she died.