Epilogue

The Order arrived to a smouldering ruin of chaos and emergency response units both magical and muggle.

"—don't even know where it came from. We have a record of this structure being destroyed over a hundred years ago and it's been nothing but forest and field since..."

"—couldn't have been gas lines, obviously, because there was nothing to hook gas lines up to!"

"—does it look like it could have been done to terrorists, lieutenant? Who were they terrorising? The sheep?"

Rushing through the assembled crowds, Harry and Ron pushed and shoved their way to the thickest throng of bystanders and medics and emergency personnel inside the still-smoking structure to discover the stone-walled room of cremated remains. Above them the ceiling and roof of this particular room had been blown off by some kind of explosion; square bricks of rock and stone littered the grounds outside in a disturbing radius of destruction. It had been no small blast; yet it was completely localized to that particular room. The rest of the castle ruins were nearly untouched by the recent activity.

From inside the cover of his sleeve, Harry gripped his wand and murmured, "Point me," focusing all his attention on Voldemort.

Yet automatically his body found its way to the pile of hollow, grey-black bones that emanated a slimy miasma of evil and disgust. Behind it was coiled a ring of finer bones with an oversized, diamond-shaped skull.

"This was like fiendfyre, Harry," whispered Ron as Harry stared incredulously at the remains of Voldemort and Nagini. "But this is something else. It's almost like it was…"

"Purifying," said Harry.

"Yes."

Harry couldn't tear his eyes away from the bones. How many years had they spent fighting smaller battles for the largest one to take place between one person and an entire army? Safely tucked away from the rest of society so there would be no innocent bystanders at risk?

"Point me," said Harry with a chilled, terse voice.

She had to be there.

She had to have made it.

After all her sacrifices, her brilliant plan and her unmeasurable bravery, she had to have made it.

He focused his entire magical core on his memories of Hermione.

"Point me," he repeated more fiercely.

His wand didn't so much as twitch.

"Point me!" Harry shouted, shaking his wand and spinning around to glare at the wreckage of the room, as if Hermione may be hiding beneath one of the many piles of ashes.

Yet his wand remained still of its own volition… until it twitched downwards, at the dark blotch against the stones at their feet, before Voldemort's broken skull.

Harry felt the chill to his bones.

"NO!"

"Mate!" hushed Ron, grabbing Harry's arm and shoving it down when people began to stare and quietly murmur in their direction. "Shhhh. C'mon. She's not here. She must have made it out."

Harry swallowed, his heart beating in his throat.

"Where did she go, Ron?" demanded Harry. His clammy hands shook and yet he was filled with determination. If she was out there, they would find her and she had to be out there because she was Hermione Jean Granger and if anyone could have found a way out, it was her.

"We'll talk to Professor McGonagall, she'll know how to find her," said Ron, dragging Harry away. "Calm down, mate."

"Hermione," said Harry, unable to tear his eyes away from the pool of blood burnt into the floor of the ruined room.

Refusing to look at the dark mark staining the floor, Ron swallowed and pushed out through the crowds.

Severus cradled Hermione in his arms as Draco hurriedly spoke the required words in Hermione's ears—

"Severus Snape lives in Spinners End, Manchester—"

—before Severus' door crashed open and they rushed inside, slamming it shut behind them again and barring it with industrial-strength enchantments.

"Accio blood replenishing potion, skelegrow, boiling water, pewter cauldrons in sizes four, seven and thirteen—" barked Severus as he wandlessly cleared and cleaned his shabby living room space.

"Reparo," cast Draco on the sofa and the dining room table, before transfiguring a ratty blanket into clean bedsheets. He looked to Severus who jutted his chin towards the table.

Draco added a cushioning charm and Severus set Hermione down gently and firmly before stripping her filthy clothes from her body in quick, efficient movements. There was no time for propriety, they had to get her breathing again.

"Accio burn paste," added Severus as he sliced open Hermione's socks to remove them, too.

"She isn't burned," said Draco, hurrying to the kitchen to clean his hands with soap and water while Severus cast scourgify and other disinfection spells anywhere he safely could over Hermione's prone body.

"You are to look after yourself before you risk contaminating her," said Severus as he set to work on healing Hermione. "And then you can explain when you involved Hermione in making your blasted horcrux, you insufferable dunderhead!"

Draco's eyes flew open and his hands stilled at Severus' words. His Adam's apple bobbed but he pressed his lips shut in a desperate effort not to incriminate himself further.

"Don't just stand there, get me three ounces of willow bark and start grinding!"

Snape's harsh commands snapped Draco out of his stupor as he raced to the stairs to the basement lab to collect the ingredients with the fastest accio he'd ever cast.

Several days later

"No," said Harry. His viridian eyes were hard and uncompromising as he glared at Professor McGonagall and Kingsley Shacklebolt. "We go out there together. If Hermione's still missing, then we aren't together."

"Mister Potter," said Shacklebolt in a kind and firm voice. "We understand you want to wait for confirmation, but we need to move forward."

"She isn't dead. I would know if she was."

McGonagall and Shacklebolt glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

"You did say, when you first entered the ruins…" began McGonagall gently.

Harry shook his head. "No, she's still out there. We need to find her!"

"And once we complete the inauguration we will. But we need to show the people you are safe and we have proof, true proof, of Voldemort's demise. We need peace, not uncertainty." Shacklebolt laid a comforting hand on Harry's shoulder. "And believe me, we want to find Hermione, too. She deserves more recognition and respect than we could ever offer her."

Harry looked up at Shacklebolt's genuine words and saw the compassion shining back at him from the man's dark eyes.

"But we need you with us when we go out there to reassure everyone that the time for fear has passed, and the time for rebuilding and healing is upon us."

With a shallow swallow and a slump of his shoulders, Harry nodded once.

"The faster we get through this, the sooner we send out another search party for Hermione," promised Shacklebolt.

His feet splayed out in front of him, his elongated form slumped back and sunk into his worn sofa, Severus rested his eyes and exhausted body. Across from him in a bourgeois sitting chair he'd transfigured from the kitchen dining set, Draco rested his heavy head on the backrest and snoozed, his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest.

Between them on the kitchen table, Hermione breathed unassisted but heavily. She still hadn't woken.

The fidelius charm had held, and would forever, it seemed, unless Draco and his horcrux were defeated.

"We needed a place that would be safe for her escape," he'd tried to explain to Severus.

"You split your soul!" had bellowed Severus. "The one thing the Headmaster forced me under oath to protect and you threw it away!"

"For her!"

Severus' next words had blistered the cracked paint on the walls and scorched Draco's good intentions to the ground.

"It was her, wasn't it? You killed Hermione to create your horcrux," had said Severus as they had watched over Hermione's healing body.

Draco's shoulders had slumped as his face had slowly lowered into his palms.

"She goaded me into it. I figured out she was using me to get information and…" Draco let out a sick sigh. "She created the curse and inoculated me before I understood what she was doing, planning. Then she tricked me into…" He shook his head. "I panicked as soon as I realized what happened and did the muggle CPR on her, and she coughed and threw up but she breathed again and Uncle, I was never so scared as I was that day… But I knew I couldn't save her or protect her. I needed your help. So I brought her to you. I knew you would protect her."

Draco looked up at Severus, then. He hesitated before adding, quietly,

"She inoculated you, too."

He stared at Severus before dropping his gray eyes and rubbing at his pale face. Draco looked far older than his youthful years in that moment. Old, worn, haggard, exhausted. Hardly the genteel noble he'd been raised to be, the Draco before Severus now was more of a reflection of the shriveled, shredded, tattered soul he had acquired.

This was the cost of victory for the light. The youth giving up their innocence in every sense in order to topple a fanatical dictator and selflessly restore the freedoms of nameless, countless, faceless others.

Severus could only wonder at the fact that Hermione had managed this miracle motivation not once, but twice.

For not only Draco had changed for the light, but she had sustained Severus, too, through his darkness and motivated him to keep going if only to protect her. Protect her so that she in turn could, over the course of the past year, create and disseminate the curse that would infect the entirety of the Death Eaters to rot them from within using her own blood.

The blood purity they had so praised had been used against them to cleanse their entire organization.

She deserved to see the light of day of the peaceful era she had brought about.

She would see it.

Severus swore to himself she would.

A month later

Once Hermione's condition stabilized, Draco and Severus moved her to one of the Malfoy villas. Draco had made a point of putting many of them under the fidelius charm and hiding them from the main family holdings as he'd come into more and more power as he aged.

"She needs air and sunlight!" had argued Draco when he'd combed out her dry, brittle hair by hand one day. "She needs the light," he repeated.

Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Severus had acquiesced. In order to hide their magical signatures outside the fideliused residence—lest anyone suspect they had survived the explosion at the castle ruins—Severus had rented a car.

Draco had to be sedated within the first thirty minutes which made the journey far more pleasant for Severus, at any rate.

With Hermione, still unresponsive, installed in a sunny chair Severus rennervated Draco and walked back inside.

"Should we get her a healer?" asked Draco later. He'd never broached the topic aloud with Severus before out of respect. But as the days and weeks went on without any further improvement in her condition, he began to lose hope she would regain consciousness.

Severus watched Hermione. He always watched Hermione. He watched her and considered Draco's suggestion. He'd mulled over such thoughts of his own, yet always resisted due to the consequences.

For he knew she would be taken away and he would never see her again.

He knew he and Draco would die without a trial. Horcrux or not, someone would figure out what Draco's weakness was and find a way to punish him.

And Severus knew he would never get to see her happy.

At least while she was asleep she was at peace.

But it wasn't truly a life, was it, to spend it asleep?

"Uncle?" asked Draco, interrupting Severus' cycle of depressive reasoning. "Isn't there anything else we can do?"

What had he missed, Severus wondered for the umpteenth time as he dragged his hand through his lank hair. What was blocking the spells from working?

What was inside her that was preventing his magic from waking her?

Severus narrowed his eyes and ran a diagnostic spell over her again. The same things always popped up: the healthy, normal level brain waves, the altered teeth, her once-broken and now-healed nose, her magically blocked menses, her healed leg and ankle. Severus shook his head. Nothing was amiss. He couldn't figure out why she hadn't woken.

"What's the blockage?"

Severus glanced up at Draco's curious question.

"You always pass over it as if it's nothing, but what is it?"

Ignoring the awkward history that accompanied the question, Severus shifted slightly and answered.

"When she initially arrived at the compound, her first menses was embarrassing and uncomfortable for her. I blocked it from recurring as she didn't have access to a wand at the time to cast it herself."

Draco nodded in understanding.

Then he straightened.

"Remove it now," he said, his voice a touch curious.

Severus arched a brow. "That would be very uncomfortable for her. It's been over a year since—"

Draco shook his head and lifted a hand, his wand at the ready. "It may do nothing, I don't know. But it's a magical blockage in her body. Perhaps it's affecting her ability to fully heal. A woman's magic is different than a man's. That's what Mother says. A woman's mind is what connects her together and rules her… if Hermione isn't connected together, perhaps her magic can't…" Draco's words trailed off. "Try," he said at last.

After a moment of reflection, Severus looked back at Hermione, bathed in sunlight and clean pyjamas and utterly still outside the soft rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.

It's no life when it's spent asleep.

… Severus lifted his wand.

Six months later

Harry looked down at the postcard, brows furrowed.

He didn't know anyone from Tahiti.

Flipping it over to check the message he was thrust back to his Hogwarts years and the precise quillmanship he would never forget.

Freedom is beautiful, Harry.

Love,

H.

So astounded was he by the message that Harry failed to notice that the postcard was magical. On the reverse, if one looked very closely, he or she would notice the couple beneath the beach umbrella held hands, their wands tucked between them as the ocean breeze ruffled their hair.

AN: The end. Thank you for reading.