[Untitled] : the end of the world

It had been four weeks since she had seen the sun rise.

She considered it rather ironic that she should take so little pleasure in the sun. It was coming up over the cliff on which Hogwarts was perched. Hogwarts lived. It lived in shards, yes, but it lived, and Dumbledore lived, and she had killed four men, taken their lives with sleight of hand and no little amount of foolish wand-waving.

Hermione Granger sat on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the first rays of dawn brightening the sky; she leaned forth and took the hand of the corpse before her, and held it to her cheek.

She whispered nonsense that later she could not remember; mixed curses and benediction.

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"Are you sure, Miss Granger?" Poppy Pomfrey asked her, pausing in her perusal of the infirmary stores.

"I am certain." She spoke the words with cold steel surety; she watched her dreams slip away from her; she had always known things would end this way.

"But there are colleges - universities - I know the magical institute at the Sorbonne offered to take you on as a third-year student-"

"I want to be useful."

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When he kissed her the first time, it was so easy. It was almost as if to say: the world may end here, but we are people, we do not.

She wanted it to be true so badly. She wanted more than anything to escape from that wretched place.

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There was a war on. The castle did not speak of it; but even the youngest children had wary eyes that were never masked by their smiles. The side of the Light was not winning; had not been for some time. Aurors died - children barely out of Hogwarts took their places. Cho Chang had been the first one of their own to die, less than six months before. The Ministry was getting desperate - no one denied anymore that Voldemort had returned.

Hermione did not go home that summer. She kissed Harry and Ron on the cheek before they boarded the train; they did not dare any further shows of affection - their masks were still fragile.

Late that night, she wept and wept, until her all her tears were dry, forevermore. She dreamed of them, of their beginning weeks at the Auror Academy, where they went directly after they stepped off the train.

They never wrote to each other. It was less painful that way.

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It was always so easy. She never thought anything more would come of it; it was the war, things happened, like becoming an assistant nurse instead of an Oxford scholar. She wanted to be useful. When he needed her, she was.

When he needed her, it was easier to forget the sacrifices that they made. She thought of his long, warm hands encircling hers, and she smiled.

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"You are horribly insufficient at even the most simple of medicinal potions, Miss Granger, but I am amazed that you managed to mess this one up-"

"Then why are you even bothering to teach me?" She threw the ladle down on the laboratory table, ran out of the workroom, and slammed the door behind her. Snape. She hated him. She could almost kill him.

Almost. Some part of her remembered how essential he was, to the war effort.

"Fuck the war," Hermione muttered.

"I am inclined to agree with you," Snape said smoothly from behind her.

She jumped, startled - she had never even heard the door open. "How dare you? How dare you!" she sputtered, turning to face him. "I got my owl for Advanced Potions. I spent seven years under your teaching - and I botch one potion, just one - and you find thousands of miniscule errors in everything I do - don't you understand that other people besides yourself have concerns? I could be anywhere else now! Anywhere!"

"That is an extremely selfish attitude to have." He sighed. "I have always demanded perfection of myself, Miss Granger - and so long as you are studying under me, I will demand it of you. It is your choice to be here. Remember that. It is always your choice."

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They spent few of their hours together after a while; the worst of the casualties came to the castle, and she was kept busy tending to those boys and girls with gaunt faces and delirious eyes, who had once been pupils. She never saw Ron or Harry. But few of those who left the castle to fight returned; and fewer of those who returned survived to fight again. She lifted water and potions to their cracked lips.

She poured and she poured. And they died in hundreds, on battlefields, in the infirmary beds, in her arms. The only time she felt alive was with him on top of her, his hands on her body or tangled in her hair.

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The war continued. In November of that year, Hogwarts began functioning as a small hospital; there were endless bedpans to clean and potions to brew; she barely felt human.

On her free nights, Hermione stood in a workroom off the Potions classroom, trying desperately to keep up with Professor Snape's frenetic instruction in more esoteric and advanced healing potions with him breathing down the back of her neck. But she never complained.

The best nights were when he looked at her completed works and merely nodded, and she began to live for his approval. Madam Pomfrey complimented her on her skills with the Skele-Gro and migraine-treatment draughts that she brewed every after noon.

She rarely looked in the mirror or dreamed any longer; she was far too tired, far too weary, far too lost in this new world of patients and iridescent liquids.

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The castle was under siege. They had always known it would happen. It was April, and the grass outside was wet with dew - she longed for that grass, but knew it was death to step outside. Still she longed for it. She thought of Harry, and Ron, and wondered; it had been nearly ten months since she'd seen them. She did not read the lists of the dead in the newspapers; it would be too easy that way, too cruel.

She also avoided the students, with their whispers of death and intrigue.

The Aurors were coming, it was said. But who? She had seen them die, seen so many of them. Dumbledore asked her, and him: will you Floo to London? Are you willing to lead them through the Forbidden Forest? Can you risk it?

Of course, they said. She wondered if Dumbledore knew.

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"It is sufficient," Professor Snape told her one night, looking down at her Wolfsbane potion for Professor Lupin one December night.

"What?" Hermione asked - she couldn't have heard him right.

"It will do."

She laughed then, a shaky little laugh - she hadn't laughed in so long - and when she looked to him, she found that he was almost smiling.

It was so easy to kiss him.

So easy.

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And there were Aurors - with a Harry she barely recognized, a Harry who did not acknowledge her. They were both so different than the two children who had gone to school together. She and Severus led them through the dense foliage of the forest, with only the Marauders' Map to guide them. That was the simple part.

The two of them were ill equipped to be in the heat of the battle that followed, so they stayed on the edge of the forest when the Aurors went forth, and perhaps everything might have been all right. But nearing the end of the bloodshed, a stray Killing Curse brushed past him.

There was nothing she could do, no potion she could brew, no spell she could whisper over him. He closed his eyes, and did not open them again.

She kissed him on the lips, once, and again on his forehead; she laid him out before her, with gentleness, as she had done the other dead soldiers before him. She did not cry.