A/N: So, here's my second story attempt.

As of 6th December 2011...I have changed the genre to Drama/Romance, because eventually, that will happen...in some way...slowly. ;) I wasn't sure whether to originally use 'Romance' as one of the genres because it won't happen for a little while and is subtle to begin with. So don't be too disappointed if nothing juicy happens for a while.

My story starts during the last parts of the Battle of Hogwarts...with quite a few changes there after, because several details bothered me and made me think of alternatives.

It starts after Voldemort has given the castle time to collect the wounded and for Harry to come to him. To everyone's knowledge Harry has not gone to Voldemort and fighting breaks out again, with people scattered all over the castle to defend the school and themselves. My story takes a different path in the Battle; some elements will keep the essence of the book/movie, but will be different in actions.

It has been hard to choose the genre for this story because it straddles several genres; from angst to drama, to adventure with even a little horror etc, a little romance. ;) A bit of this, a bit of that and a bit of the other, and some humour too. :) I'll also use dreams quite a lot after a few chapters...because dreams can be many things: funny, poweVoldemortrful and instructive for future actions. ;)

I have chosen to class this story as M for mature themes. Although a lot may not be adult in content, it gives me room to breathe and put in scenes or language as they happen. So if you think you might be offended by "anything", don't read it!

I don't want to say too much about content, because it will give some of the story away and make it less of a surprise. I'm hoping there's a little wondering over certain parts, but that's all I'll say. I CAN say the story is based around Hermione and Ginny...and they are my main protagonists.

Harry Potter characters and places belong to J.K. Rowling, I've just borrowed them for a while. Other characters etc, are of my own creation. Any mistakes, inconsistencies, big mess-ups or self-indulgent waffle are purely my own creation too! :D

The story is still in progress, but I have finished over 30 chapters(as of Nov 5, 2011) so far and will post a couple now and then...but maybe not as regularly as I did with my first story.

Right...on with the show. I'm posting the first two chapters to either make you interested or turn you off. :D After maybe six-eight chapters you'll know if it's your thing or not. :)

PLEASE NOTE: I rarely accept guest reviews and delete them. If you have some critical venom please have the guts to register on the site with a pen name and leave your review in the proper way. I won't contest those reviews at all, the whole world and their pet mouse can see those. :) Guests reviewers will be wasting their time.

1: Battle

Another loud boom and another vibration; there had been so many that it was hard to differentiate between separate blasts now. It was almost as if the stone floors and walls were in a constant state of trembling and the rumbling noises that accompanied each impact made it seem like the castle was in a very, very long thunder storm or earthquake. It was as if the very air itself had become unstable and shaky, which gave the desperate defenders of this great bastion of all magical places, an even deeper sense of being trapped in some terrible dream.

It wasn't a dream however, but a very real situation, with the damage to the walls and structures of Hogwarts sadly matched by the damage to human life within it and around it.

Death had no prejudice; it didn't care how old an entity was, how brilliant they were or how a person's family had had so much loss already that it wasn't fair to have yet more grief. At this moment in time it did appear that Death was taking more recruits from the side of good than the side of evil. However, that would also be a mistaken judgment too; Death wasn't concerned by which side was winning or losing, it just mopped up the carnage and debris that came in its path.

In the midst of it all, Hermione was still fighting. She had taken cover momentarily in a dark stone alcove on the Third Floor, out of breath and unable to hardly move from exhaustion, after managing to stun and injure yet another Death Eater. The tide of Voldemort's followers was unending and after defeating one, another one would take their place, full of the same fanatical venom.

Not long before Hermione had found herself in this situation, Voldemort had given them a break to attend to their wounded and collect their dead. What a noble, chivalrous man he was. Man? That evil thing isn't a man! Hermione thought fiercely. He only stopped the fighting in the hope Harry would feel so guilty about all the dead that he would go to the Dark Lord meekly. When that didn't happen, the onslaught started again with seemingly more chaos than before.

We're losing, Hermione thought. There was no other way to analyse the situation. In the very near future they would be horribly outnumbered, with the witches and wizards, still able to fight, that much more exhausted and weakened, which she herself was beginning to feel.

Ron was fighting a Death Eater, a little along the corridor from Hermione. He was raging with pure fury, driven by his shock and grief of the very recent death of his brother Fred. Hermione wasn't able to watch Ron too closely, if she did she would become distracted with worry and fear and then she wouldn't be as effective herself. Even in this small part of Hogwarts castle it was almost a case of everyone for themselves. Survive, was the motto to hold to, whatever you do, just try to survive...somehow.

Hermione wasn't sure where Harry was at this moment. He couldn't have been silly and gone to Voldemort because they would soon have known about it and Voldemort's forces would have stood down to gloat.

The last couple of hours had been a complete blur, searching for and destroying more horcruxes, battling foes and barely having time to regroup and tend to their casualties, before the onslaught began again. Hermione assumed Harry was elsewhere in the castle, maybe with some of the other Order members; Ron and herself hadn't seen him since they came back to the Great Hall. As the fighting had begun yet again, and she and Ron had found themselves driven to the Third Floor, it was done in another blur of movement and very little planning.

Taking a breather in her alcove, was all well and good, but Hermione didn't really know what was going on elsewhere. From her place she had assumed it wasn't good news, but she wanted some real facts in the hope she would somehow see a way to make their fightback more successful or to see any way to do something different or unexpected.

I need to get to the Great Hall, she thought to herself. The Great Hall had been a congregation point throughout most of the Battle so far; if anywhere had news of the overall situation it would be there. She was readying herself to join battle again and assist Ron.

There hadn't been any noises of curses and counter-curses nearby for a moment or two, and steeling herself to the possibility that Ron might have been silenced in the worst possible way, while she had taken her tiny rest, she peeped out from her hiding place.

Hermione let out a huge sigh of relief as she saw Ron, standing in the corridor. She would never have forgiven herself if her exhaustion had left Ron to be struck down. He was the only one left standing, with three of his foes unconscious on the ground and now magically tied up, although none would be waking up for a long while yet. This matched the four opponents Hermione had dealt with at her end of the corridor.

Ron was hunched over with his hands on his knees, like an athlete after running a marathon. Tired and out of breath he might be, but he was alive.

"Ron?" Hermione called as she made her way to him, still with her wand at the ready, just in case more opposition appeared.

The red-haired man turned towards her, and he gave her a weak smile. As Hermione reached him, she threw her arms around him.

"Are you all right, Hermione?" he asked, embracing her back.

"Yes," she replied, touching a hand to his cheek where he had acquired another small cut. "Where did the others go? I'm sure there were more of them?"

"I dunno," Ron answered, weary. "I'm not complaining though. Perhaps they thought Harry was with us, then saw that he wasn't and decided we weren't worth the trouble?"

"Maybe."

"I wonder where Harry is though? Did you see him at all?"

"No," Hermione said. "I don't think he came to this floor. I'm hoping he's either under his cloak somewhere or with some of the Order."

"Yeah, I reckon he might be."

"We need to get to the Great Hall," said Hermione.

"Why?" Ron asked, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm for the suggestion.

"We need to know what's happening."

"I think we can tell by all the bloody booming and yelling from the other floors and from outside," said Ron.

"We need to know the overall state of things," Hermione went on. "Which...which of us and how many are still standing, and that kind of thing."

"It's going to be a tricky way down there. We can't even guarantee the Grand Staircase is still intact."

"I know, Ron. But we have to try. For the moment this floor looks fairly clear. Let's just get to the staircase and see what things are like there, okay?"

"All right," Ron sighed. "We're not doing much to help on this floor at the moment, are we?"

Hermione clasped Ron's hand as they quietly walked along the corridor to reach the staircase. Everywhere looked strange with rubble and glass strewn about, and the suits of armour and statues missing after having been summoned to fight for the school.

Even after the last couple of hours of seeing it regularly, Hermione and Ron would never get used to seeing spatterings of blood on the floor and walls. Sometimes the blood was a drop here or there, maybe from a nosebleed or from a tooth being knocked out, or even a cut finger. More worrying were the larger, almost pools of blood, where footprints could be seen through the red fluid. On more than one occasion Hermione looked at the pattern of a bloodied area and could immediately imagine the injured owner dragging themselves along as they bled, determined to fight on, or desperately trying to find some kind of safety.

Fortunately, the pair met no one else as they walked onwards, but they could still hear the battle raging around the castle. The dark sky outside was frequently illuminated by green and red lights, from spells being cast. Had it not been the middle of a world-changing battle, they might have stood and admired the colours like they would have admired Fred and George's fireworks. Fred was gone now, he wouldn't enjoy fireworks ever again.

Hermione suspected that Ron was a little reluctant to go back to the Great Hall, because he would have to face the place where his late brother's body was placed, along with Tonks and Lupin and so many others. She gave his hand a little extra squeeze as they reached the stairs.

The staircase was clear on the flight down from the Third Floor. They walked onto the flight of stairs carefully, more worried about its stability than whether it would awkwardly decide to change direction.

As they moved down another flight, passing a limp body of a black-haired and bearded Death Eater, almost certainly dead rather than knocked-out, they heard the noise of battle through on the Second Floor.

A natural Gryffindor instinct made both of them feel like running through to that floor and assisting their side with the fierce fight that was so obviously taking place there. However, Hermione was strong-willed, and her mission was to reach the Great Hall. If they somehow couldn't do that, then of course, they would go back to where they could hear those clashes of viscious duelling.

Another couple of flights of stairs, and another couple of Death Eater bodies, but also a Hufflepuff girl. Hermione and Ron didn't know which student it was, because the face was a bloodied mess, possibly the result of werewolf activity. They only knew it was a Hufflepuff from the school uniform. There was nothing they could do for the girl and carried on.

Passing the entrance to the First Floor corridor they could hear crashes and bangs from further away, probably from the other end of the corridor. There were no doors left hanging to the entrances to the Floors and Hermione leant forward slightly to peer in to the First Floor corridor entrance.

"HERMIONE!"

"Wha...?"

Before Hermione could answer something had bowled into her, knocking her to the floor, as a green light flashed over the place where her head had been. She found Ron lying on top of her and saw him shoot a spell back, then heard a thump as a Death Eater fell limply to the ground and rolled down a few of the stairs they had only just descended a short time before.

Ron was breathing hard, and looked very pale. He suddenly became very conscious that he was lying on top of Hermione, looking down into her face. Even though they were in the midst of something life-threatening and he had just saved her life, he couldn't help having a fleeting thought of lying on top of Hermione in bed. As quickly as he thought it, he became self-conscious and embarrassed.

"Oops, sorry Hermione," Ron said, going a little red in the face and making to move.

"Sorry?" Hermione's eyes were wide. "You just saved my life!" She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss him on the lips. Since their earlier first kiss, this didn't seem such a scary or odd thing to do anymore.

As they broke off, both blushing a little, they both kind of remembered where they were again and Ron got back up, offering his hand to Hermione to help get her to her own feet.

"Where the hell did he come from?" Hermione asked, not just to Ron but to the air in general.

"From the Second Floor," Ron shrugged. "Perhaps he glimpsed us go past and came to see who it was?"

"It's like Hogwarts is infested with rats or something," Hermione said. "Just when you think you know where the main nest is, another one comes out of the woodwork."

"Yeah," Ron said, giving a soft chuckle.

Ron grabbed hold of Hermione's hand and they made their way down the next two flights of stairs to reach the Entrance Hall.

There was much more rubble on the stairs as they descended lower, and all the portraits on the walls, that were left hanging, were empty. That was until they looked at one large painting of a castle and saw that the usually empty battlements had a fully populated garrison behind the crenallations. Quite what the portrait people thought they could do, by garrisoning a painting of a castle was unclear, but what was clear was the desire of Hogwarts and its inhabitants to fight back and defend their place.

The Entrance Hall was empty, except for a couple of aurors from the Order guarding the doors to the Great Hall. They both turned when they saw Hermione and Ron, with their wands pointed at them, but quickly lowered again. There was no need for any detailed checks to see if the two newcomers were indeed who they appeared to be, as the Great Hall was full of witches and wizards, and aurors walking in and out. Two Death Eaters wouldn't stand a chance in there. It was perhaps the only place at the moment which could boast that fact.

Ron and Hermione walked into the Great Hall, a few faces turned to look at them. Ron's eyes were drawn to the shrouded line of elongated lumps on the floor in the centre of the Hall and to one lump in particular. He knew exactly which one was Fred's and not just because his sister Ginny and his mother were near to it.

Ginny was helping Mrs. Weasley with the wounded but didn't seem to want to leave Fred's side and kept subconsciously edging back to him. It seemed Mrs. Weasley had based her own little casualty station in a nearby spot for the same reasons. Hermione held Ron's hand tighter, feeling choked-up again herself.

As they walked further into the Hall, Mrs. Weasley and Ginny looked up and couldn't hide their relief when they saw Ron walking towards them. The older woman finished bandaging a Ravenclaw student's head and came over and hugged Ron, and then Hermione.

"Oh, look at you," Mrs. Weasley said to Ron. "How did that happen?" she asked as she lightly touched Ron's cheek and his latest cut.

"Well I didn't cut myself shaving, did I?" Ron answered trying to bat away his mother's investigating hand. "Don't worry about it Mum, other people need your help more than me."

Mrs. Weasley looked like she was about to protest, but what Ron had said was right. A little cut on a cheek wasn't dangerous or particularly disabling.

Ginny came over and hugged them both too. She was very pale and looked tired and scared; that was how the majority of people looked in the Great Hall.

"Where's Harry?" Ginny asked.

"We...we don't know," Hermione answered truthfully. "We thought he might be with some of the other Order members or...somewhere."

"Oh," was all Ginny could answer with. She looked on the verge of tears, but it could have been for a number of reasons and her worry over Harry just added to her distress.

"I'm sure we would know, if he...you know...well, if he had been hurt or...captured," Hermione said picking her words carefully. Ginny only nodded to her.

"Where have you just come from?" Mrs. Weasley asked, having given her Ravenclaw patient leave to go again.

"We were on the Third Floor," Ron told his mother. "It was mental for a while and then there was no one there, just Hermione and me. She wanted to get back to here and it was mostly an uneventful walk here."

"He's being modest," Hermione said, smiling. "Ron here saved my life. He pushed me to the ground just as a curse was aimed at where my head had been. He was brilliant."

"See? You always say that like you're surprised I'm capable of such things?" Ron said with a smirk. He rather enjoyed being portrayed as the surprise hero, somehow that made any heroic actions seem even more heroic. After thinking that, though, his smile dropped; what was important was that Hermione was alive and well, it didn't matter if he was the reason for that or not, or whether he got praise.

"Do you know where Professor McGonagall is?" Hermione asked Ginny and her mother.

"She's at the other end of the Hall," Mrs. Weasley said pointing to the end of the room where the teacher's table would normally have been.

Hermione looked in that direction and saw the figure of Minerva McGonagall near to the door leading to the Trophy Room, talking with Professor Flitwick and an auror and a Ravenclaw Prefect. The brunette walked over to them as the other people moved off.

"Miss Granger," McGonagall said as she laid eyes on her. "Where have you just come from?"

"Third Floor Corridor, and then down the Grand Staircase."

"What was it like where you were?"

"It was hectic on the Third Floor, then everything was silent, no one to be seen. Which was a little odd. Then Ron and I came down the stairs and it seemed both the Second and First Floors had some action. There's a...," she lowered her voice. "There's a dead Hufflepuff girl on the stairs there. I'm afraid the face was too badly injured for us to know who it was," Hermione said looking down. "A Death Eater tried to attack me, coming from the Second Floor. After that, there was nothing," Hermione finished her report.

"That's a little strange, as to why they weren't bothering with the Third Floor anymore?" McGonagall questioned. She was thinking outloud rather than really asking a question.

"Ron wondered if they attacked us hard, thinking we had Harry with us, and then realizing he wasn't, left us alone."

"Harry wasn't with you?" Flitwick asked.

"No," Hermione replied. "He wasn't with us. We don't know where he is. Actually, I wondered if you knew where he was?"

"We don't," McGonagall said gravely. "I'm sure he must be all right, because I'm certain we would know if it wasn't the case."

"That's what I've been thinking too," said Hermione. She was feeling more troubled now. It didn't seem that anyone had seen Harry since before the latest bout of battle had begun again.

A few moments of silence ensued, where you could almost hear the cogs working in the three brilliant minds standing by the Trophy Room door.

Hermione broke the silence, but kept her voice lowered. "Things aren't going well are they?"

Flitwick looked at McGonagall and the witch gave a look back to him, before focusing back on Hermione.

"What makes you say that?" the older witch answered.

"I have eyes, Professor. And ears," said Hermione. "We're becoming fewer and fewer and there seems no end to Voldemort's followers joining the fray."

Another look passed between the two professors, and obviously something had been decided from their silent exchange.

"Hermione, would you come with us?" McGonagall said, opening the Trophy Room door and indicating that Hermione go through and down the steps with them.

The brunette wasn't sure what to think, but assumed she was going to be given some information, that Professors Flitwick and McGonagall didn't want overheard elsewhere. This immediately made her mind race, thinking of all the things she might be about to learn.

Hermione nodded, and walked through the door and down the steps to the Trophy Room, with little Professor Flitwick following close behind, and a stony-faced Minerva McGonagall following him, after looking cautiously around the Great Hall and then locking the door after she passed through.