"Hermione, everyone else is gone, aren't you ready?" Harry questioned, a hand on his best friend's shoulder. She was knelt on the ground, long curly hair blowing softly behind her. The cool breeze stung at her eyes and she rubbed at them with the back of a gloved hand.

"Yeah, it's bloody cold out here too. It isn't like the git would have stuck around for us anyway, 'Mione!" Ron complained, he rubbed his hands together and blew on them a few times for dramatic effect. His nose was incredibly bright red, like Rudolph in the storybook her mum had read her when she was a child.

"Go ahead, I'll come to Grimmauld when I'm done." Hermione gave each a glance before she turned back to the little plaque in front of her. It was a beautifully new, shimmering silver that caught what little light the grey sky provided and glinted prettily. It didn't suit him- at all, she knew that, she would have thought someone else would have been concerned about the fact as well.

But then, Dumbledore was dead and he was the one who would have noticed something like that, Minerva had commissioned it, she knew the elder witch was just trying to do right by the man who'd lived a double life for so very long. A double life that had killed him far too prematurely.

She wondered sometimes if he'd even managed to know true happiness before he'd met his demise.

Hermione sighed when the two told her to 'be careful' and left, their figures faded into the distance and she turned back to the plaque.

Severus Snape
1960-1998
Order of Merlin First Class

Hermione sighed, nothing else, just his name, his life in a couple of numbers, and his award for dying for them all.

It was sad, she'd always felt something for the professor she couldn't quite put her finger on. It had been hard to see him dying, even harder to leave him there on the floor of that shack and leave with Harry and Ron.

She hadn't been able to resist her urge to lean over and close his eyes before she'd scurried out after them.

She pulled a glove from her hand and touched the cold metal that marked his life, and his death.

"You deserved so much better, a life, a family. I know you weren't as bad as we made you out to be. I'm so sorry I couldn't help you!" The tears began to fall and as if a dam had been blown apart they continued to flow, dropping down her face and onto the cold, dying grass.

She doubled over, leaned over his plaque, and cried. She was crying for him, for Fred, for everyone they'd lost during the war, even those on the other side.

They all deserved so much better.

The metal felt warm beneath her cheek and her eyes flicked open, her gaze locked on the smooth surface, her tears still lingered across it and began to mingle with raindrops that had just begun to fall from the sky. As if the sky was crying with her, for all those who were lost.

The letters glowed and she gave a little gasp of shock. Her fingers, still exposed reached out and brushed across the glowing letters and she felt a tugging pull- much like apparition- before she lost consciousness.