Harry didn't understand how he could've gotten another letter from Dumbledore even though the man had been dead for well over a year. He didn't understand what the letter was saying. Hermione had lived but then she had died? Apparently Dumbledore had intrinsically known that Harry would need more than words for explanation and had left him a password that would open a special cabinet by the pensieve. Within the cabinet were several bottles of memories labelled.

Harry fell into the pensieve to look at the first memory. Several hours later with tears streaming down his face sobs wracked his body as he crumpled to the floor. Harry lamented for the friend that he had lost, regained, and then just as quickly lost again.

There had been the painful sliver of hope that somehow she had survived the last several decades ready to surprise him at any moment. But in his heart he knew better. Hermione would've never let him suffer alone if she had still been alive.

A very quiet part of Harry understood Voldemort just a bit more than before. Contrary to many who believe that Voldemort was unable to love Harry saw proof otherwise. Watched through Dumbledore's eyes as a handsome teenage boy begged, pleaded, and threatened the dying witch in his arms to live unaware and uncaring of the chaos that ensued around him. Perhaps that was the hardest to see. To see the humanity within his nemesis and see it crushed just as easily.

And yet perhaps that was the relief in Voldemort's eyes as he accepted the sickly green wrap of the Killing Curse. His face serene as his body thudded to the ground. Perhaps Tom, the man before Voldemort, will get his chance with Hermione now, in death.