The Minister's door closed behind her with a note of finality. Hermione looked up at the ceiling and took a deep, steadying breath before setting off down the long corridor. In light of Kingsley's ultimatum, she needed time to think. She desperately needed to go home.

She had known there would be consequences when she woke up that morning, looked at her bloody knuckles, and remembered what she had done. What started out as a simple intention to remove a parasite from her world, had ended in a drunken tirade and a violent outburst.

She had assumed that Kingsley would fire her, perhaps send her on a sabbatical. At worst, call a Wizengamot and charge her with something small. But in the end, the Minister for Magic had asked for something almost as bad as her resignation.

He'd asked her to apologise to Malfoy in such a way that the wizarding world could see it. He wanted her show a face of forgiveness to those who had wronged her, and to ask forgiveness for herself. To erase the bad message she'd sent when she had assaulted a former Death Eater who, despite his past, hadn't actually done anything to harm her that night.

There was no denying it; she'd lost the moral high ground to one of the most unscrupulous men left in Wizarding England. A decade after she'd first met him in Flourish & Blotts, and Lucius Malfoy still made her feel like a child.

And he had seen her cry. Again. Everyone in the room had seen it. That hurt worse than her knuckles.

Her therapist, when she started talking to him again, was going to have kittens.

Kingsley assured her that he would handle getting Lucius to agree to the whole thing, and that she was not to worry on that account. To that end, he had booked an appointment at Malfoy Manor that very afternoon.

She had tried to offer alternatives, had tried to wriggle out of it, but it was no good. Kingsley was adamant. She was going to have to apologise, and she had better make it look good.

She knew that she had gotten off lightly, considering that her selfish actions might have put innocent people in danger. It was just that she hated apologising for something she didn't wholly regret. But if lives depended on it, she could swallow her morality, and yes, her pride too.

As she left the Ministry, she couldn't help but notice the way that everyone was looking at her askance. Whispering amongst themselves the moment they thought she was out of earshot. She couldn't blame them. Half of them would have been there at the gala last night. Still they all gave her a wide berth. Perhaps Kingsley had asked that she be given some privacy? Another thing she should be grateful to him for.

Hermione stepped out of her fireplace to the clamouring sound of the doorbell and a great insistent pounding. Her shoulders drooped in defeat. She was too exhausted for anger. Could the press have found out where she lived? So much for privacy.

Making her way to the door, she peered through the murky pane of the Who-Am-I? fixed across the peephole, and sighed with relief. Not reporters, and their auras were clear. No Polyjuice that she could see.

She opened the door and her whole family rushed in, arms filled with barrels of fudge and plates of cakes. Arthur and Molly, Ron and George, with Ginny and Harry bringing up the rear. They all wore concerned expressions, save Ron, who was grinning like an idiot and holding up a copy of Wizard's Weekly above his head as though it were the World Cup.

Hermione groaned. On the front cover, in moving colour, was a shot of her punching Lucius Malfoy in the face. The headline read, "War-Hero Decks Former Death Eater!"

The little hope that she had been nursing that somehow, this entire sorry event had managed to slip the notice of the wizarding world fizzled away.

Molly said, "I think we'd better sit down, dear."

Within minutes the whole family had made themselves at home. Arthur was making tea, delighted with her electric kettle and all her muggle appliances. Everyone else had assembled in a spacious, ultra-modern living room that starkly contrasted with their hand-me-downs and scruffy haircuts.

"Hermione, I think I speak for everyone when I say we're on your side." Molly began.

Ron gave a little snort. "'Course we're on her side, mum. This is the best thing that's happened all year." Ron had thrown himself onto her rug and was still pouring over the picture. George was sitting cross legged next to him. He looked more animated than Hermione had seen him in a long, long time.

"Whatever happens, we're right behind you." Arthur called out from the kitchen. "Not that I think he'd be fool enough to try anything. What did Kingsley say?"

Of course they knew she'd been to see the Minister. The whole wizarding world probably knew.

"He's asked me to apologise to Malfoy, and he wants me to do it where people can see it."

Ron and Ginny swore vehemently and Arthur came laden with tea mugs, shaking his head. "Those non-magical assault laws are archaic. They won't last long under Kingsley. My advice; just leave it and let this blow over. I'd bet my last Sickle that within six months, he'll sneak a Bill through the Ministry making muggle violence a little more acceptable. Before you know it, Malfoy won't have a leg to stand on, even if he does decide to prosecute." With an encouraging smile, he pushed a cup into her hands, as though he thought she was too fragile to take it herself.

"I don't think Kingsley should have to pass a law making violence less illegal just so I can get away with what I did, Arthur." Hermione said slowly. She took a sip of her tea. "But I don't want to apologise either."

She hadn't told them yet that she had already made up her mind to do it. It seemed somehow treacherous to say aloud. She couldn't stand the idea of how her loved ones might look at her if they knew she was going to back down like a-

Like a coward.

Ron looked away from the paper for the first time since he'd walked in the door. "Hermione. This is Lucius Malfoy we're talking about. He deserved it. Don't blame yourself for him being a twat for the last fifty years."

George looked up at his father with a thoughtful expression, and Hermione thought she could hear the wheels of mischief starting to turn. "Dad, you hit him once, didn't you? How'd you get away with it? Some sort of loophole?"

Everyone beamed at him, including Hermione. "No, son." Arthur said gently. "The truth is, with Gilderoy Lockhart there signing his ridiculous books, my little- ah, altercation with Malfoy wasn't even the most interesting thing happening in Flourish and Blotts that day, let alone in the wizarding world." He sighed. "These are different times, son. There hasn't been so much as a robbery in weeks! Not with the famous Harry Potter in the Auror Division." Harry smiled sheepishly at that, but couldn't protest much. He knew it was true. "People are too scared to commit crimes these days. Nothing worthy of getting in the paper, anyway."

"Except you, Hermione," Ginny said cheekily. "People will be talking about what you did for years."

Hermione rather thought that that was the problem. "Pass me that paper, Ron. Let's see what people are saying."

A quick skim of Wizard Weekly -and the Daily Prophet, when Hermione's owl brought it to her- confirmed what she had already suspected. She even read Ginny's copy of the Quibbler, just to be sure.

Her drunken assault of Lucius Malfoy was, apparently, the most important thing to have happened in all of wizardry last night. Articles about the 'incident' were featured on every front page. The rest of the newspapers were mostly filled with flimsy justifications for her behaviour. Photographs of her standing side by side with Harry and Ron. Reviews of some of the books and essays she had written. Praise of her charitable works, and admiration for all of the new spells and potions she had created at such a young age.

No-one seemed to find it wrong that she could do what she had done. Reporters weren't outright saying that Malfoy had been asking for it, but no-one was defending him, and there wasn't so much as a single reference to all of his philanthropic works to be seen. The only difference between all of the papers was that the Quibbler seemed to think that a cabal of Argentinian Mind-Wranglers could be behind her 'uncharacteristic display'.

Everyone seemed to think that she was above criticism. They danced around the truth to try to excuse what she had done. Or maybe it was just that everyone thought former Death Eaters didn't deserve protection.

It all left a horrible taste in her mouth.

While she sat frowning and thinking, it occurred to the Molly and Arthur that she probably needed some time to herself, and all of a sudden they remembered that they had somewhere important to be. With pointed looks at Harry and all their children, they kissed and hugged her and scolded her fiercely for not visiting in so long.

As Hermione was shooing everyone out the door, she realised that Harry had gone awfully quiet. He wasn't sulking, exactly, but he looked so lost in thought as he hovered in the doorway that she wondered if he had forgotten where he was.

"Harry?" Molly called. "Better get a move on, dear."

"You go on." Harry assured her. "We have some catching up to do."

She saw exactly what he was planning. "Oh, Harry, don't. I'm fine. Really. Go home with Ginny."

"Rubbish." Harry said flatly. "We're staying, aren't we, Ron?"

Ron looked at her uncomfortably as he thought it over. They hadn't slept in the same house since the break-up. Then Ron nodded and said, "Yeah, good idea." His face broke in a slow grin. "Reckon there's enough space in that living room for a tent?"

As it turned out, there was more than enough space. They set up the old tent with fits of laughter. They stuffed it full with blankets and cushions, and Molly's cooking. Lamps adorned every available space, chasing out the darkness within and without. With a flick of her wand, the apartment rang with music. It was childish and silly, but they all needed it. Something like the glory of the old days had come back to them and for one night it was just them against the world. How she had missed it.

Hermione had a whole cake to herself and more fudge than was wise. She couldn't remember the last time she had been able to stomach more than a mouthful at a time. In between mouthfuls, they talked about how Harry's work was going (he was excelling, but still uncomfortable with the way his fellow Aurors treated him) and about Ron's plans to turn his team of second-rate flyers into legends.

They talked, endlessly, about her work. Harry asked how she had made the Who-Am-I? and if it could be made any smaller so that it might be used in the field. Ron teased her for a good half hour about her decorative choices. It was plainly obvious that they were trying to keep her mind off things, but their transparency didn't change the fact that they had dropped everything to come and support her.

Before she knew it, it was very late. The had turned off all the lamps, save one, and the music was no more than a whisper. The sun would be up soon. Ron was snoring in his steady, predictable way, and who would have thought that such a grating sound could be so comforting? Hermione flicked idly through one of her old Charm's books by the light of her wand, wondering what her past self would have said if she had known the mess that she would one day get into.

"Why didn't you say something?"

She turned, surprised to find Harry still awake. She shouldn't have been. The one subject they had avoided was what she had done, and it couldn't be put off forever.

Harry turned on a lantern with a flick of his wrist and untangled himself from his sleeping bag. He didn't look happy. "If it was that bad, why didn't you talk to us? We're your friends."

God, he was so kind. She had shut him out and lied to him by omission for months, and he was still trying to save her. She smiled weakly at him. "I can take care of myself, Harry. I've been doing it for years."

Sadly, he didn't take the bait. His emerald eyes pierced her and held her in place. "You waited until we were both gone, and then you went to see the man who watched you get tortured? Hermione, we would have gone with you."

His hurt rung in every word. She had hurt her best friend. "You would have tried to stop me, Harry, and I needed to face him." She turned away. "You don't know what it's been like."

"So tell me what it's been like, then."

Wrapped up in his sleeping bag behind them, Ron had stopped snoring. Neither of them noticed.

At the very least, she owed him an answer, but it was hard to find the words. "They're all gone. Voldemort, Bellatrix, Pettigrew. Everyone who had a part in killing our friends. But he's everywhere."

At Harry's disbelieving look, she elaborated, "I mean, I see him everywhere, even..." even when I'm sleeping. "He's the only one of them left, and just because of who he is, they've all let him get away with it. It's just so wrong."

"The war is over. It's been hard for all of us. But we've got to-"

"To what? Pretend that it didn't happen?"

"No! I'll never forget the sound of her torturing you. Or burying all our friends. But I'm not burying you too, Hermione. You can't go on like this. If he really is this evil person that you think he is, this is exactly what he would want. For you to spend your life being miserable over him."

She looked at him incredulously. "Are you saying you don't think he's evil?"

"The Malfoys didn't really have a lot of choices, Hermione." She made a noise of disgust, and he went quiet for a moment. "But they're not what matters to me. You are. You and Ron, and all the rest of us. We made it, Hermione. We survived."

I'm not sure about that, Harry. Sometimes I think that a part of me died in that Manor. The brave, selfless part, and ever since then, I've been trying to get her back, but it never works for long.

"How do you do it, Harry?" Her eyes were stinging, and she absently rubbed them. "Voldemort Crucio'd you, didn't he? You pretended to be dead. You didn't make a sound. And now you're an Auror, and you have Ginny, and-" And you don't have nightmares, and think about vengeance all the time. You're still a good person.

Where did my goodness go?

She realised that she was crying. Horrible, wracking sobs. She pressed her hands to her face in shame. A moment later she found herself pulled into a crushing hug.

Face pressed into her hair, Ron said, "You have us, Hermione. We're the Golden Trio, remember?" His voice broke on the last word.

She choked out a laugh. It only made her cry harder, which in turn, made them hug her harder. One of them, she didn't know who, started rubbing her back comfortingly.

The Golden Trio. There was nothing shining or precious about her anymore. She didn't feel like a hero. Maybe she never had been one. Just a person who was lucky enough to have kind parents, excellent teachers, and wonderful friends.

"We could always make a run for it." Harry said as the three of them watched the sun rise. "Just us, Ginny, Molly and Arthur, George and Crookshanks. We'd have to swing by Romania and grab Charlie, though…"

She laughed again, and this time there were no tears in it. "I'll start packing, shall I?"

As they bid their farewells, she knew that there would be no running. She was a grown witch, and all the tents and sleepovers in the world could not make her a child again.

By noon, Hermione was inundated with hundreds of letters. Much to her relief, there wasn't a single shred of hate-mail to be found. Most of them were expressions of solidarity from her readers and fellow Hogwarts veterans. There was even a deliciously amused sounding Howler from Headmistress McGonagall.

Before long, the pile was large enough to cover the kitchen table, and it kept growing. Out of the whole lot, there were two she found particularly interesting.

One was from Astoria Greengrass, Draco's fiance. Hermione only knew that she was a Pureblood, so she would have suspected the letter would be reproachful, if not outright explosive. But instead Astoria was… friendly. Empathetic. She never came out and said it, but it only took a bit of reading between the lines for Hermione to guess that Astoria's relationship with her fiance's father was troubled, to say the least.

She supposed it shouldn't have really shocked her. The Weasleys were Purebloods, after all, and they had been nothing but kind to her. It stood to reason that not all Pureblood families were awful.

The other was from, much to her surprise, Percy Weasley. She had never had any real connection to him, and she was more than a little concerned that he knew where she lived.

But as it turned out, the letter was an overture of friendship. Sort of.

It was several pages long and detailed an exhaustive list of every charge Percy felt the Malfoy lawyers could reasonably hope to bring against her. Judging by the diction used, the list was probably taken from centuries-old statutes, which explained why she had never heard of any of them. Percy had even taken the time to jot down the punishments a guilty verdict would bring her.

"Grievous Harm to the Reputation of a Pureblood?" She had a good laugh at that one. No-one could possibly do more harm to Lucius Malfoy's reputation than what he had done himself. She made a mental note to send the letter to Ron and Harry; after how kind they had been, it really was the least that she could to.

Then she read the punishments Percy had scrawled next to it. She stopped dead. In a disbelieving sort of voice, she read aloud; "Exile? Censure? Seizure of Property and Indentured Servitude?"

Suddenly, she couldn't have laughed if someone had offered her a thousand Galleons to do it. Hermione paced back and forth, the letter in her hands. She had to blink several times before her vision cleared enough to read again.

The awful letter went on. "Malicious Slander (Of a Pureblood by an Inferior Person)... Whipping! Wand-stripping!" Her blood ran cold. "Azkaban?"

Azkaban! The Minister hadn't said a word about Azkaban. Or the rest of it. Was this what he had meant when he had mentioned that Lucius could bring charges against her?

She had thought the idea of apologising horrible enough as it was, but what if that didn't satisfy him?

She wrestled down her fear with a calming breath. None of it mattered, because regardless of the charges, Lucius Malfoy couldn't hope to beat her in a court of law. She had made a mistake. A terrible, stupid mistake. She saw that now, albeit belatedly, but that didn't change the fact of who she was. And who he was.

Besides, she had been able to put a case together for Buckbeak, hadn't she? With enough time, she was sure she could present a defence, and she had some Inquisitor friends of her own. Arthur had said the laws could always be rewritten… But she didn't want to resort to that. Not unless she had no choice.

He would never be able to get a conviction. Would he?

She was struck by a vision of Lucius as she had seen him at the Battle of Hogwarts. Pale, brittle, gaunt. She remembered the way his robes had hung off of him. Such a powerful figure, brought so low. The pride he had wrapped around himself like a cloak torn to shreds, until he was a mere shadow of himself.

That would never happen to her. She wouldn't allow it. She wouldn't allow any of it to happen to her.

At the end of the letter, Percy included the following postscript,

Please bear in mind, Ms Granger, that the lawyers the Malfoy family has at their disposal may not hesitate to levy charges that the common man would see as absurd, if their master demanded that they do it. What's more, my experience in the Ministry (and here Percy broke off to write an entire paragraph lauding his own exalted achievements and various portfolios) does not grant me the precise knowledge of the law that Lord Malfoy's lawyers would undoubtedly have. Your actions may have broken laws that I am not aware of.

Perhaps if you threw yourself on his mercy, you might escape with a simple wand-stripping? They don't expect it to be done in public these days, and really, being an academic I'm sure you could get by without a wand for a year or so-

Somewhere in the kitchen, a glass violently flung itself off the shelf to shatter against the wall.

She waited all day for a Ministry owl until she was sick with worry, hoping for some confirmation that Kingsley had done as promised. That the situation, though bad, would not get any worse.

But none came.

This chapter took a lot of work but I am proud of the result. Major thanks to my editor and beta for all the work they put into making this one shine!

I wanted to have a quick talk with all you beautiful readers about what will be happening over the next few chapters. And don't worry, this talk is spoiler free.

Firstly, the next chapter will be... kind of an interlude. It won't be very long. It will also be, sadly, our second to last chapter for this route, but I think you are going to enjoy it as it's been really fun to write.

Secondly, after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to give the story an alternate ending. XD Do I play too many romance games? Honestly, maybe. Of course, you'll be under no obligation whatsoever to read the alternate ending. You are more than welcome to read the final chapter of this route (which will be chapter seven) and go, 'Hey, that's enough for me now, I'm not really down with this alternate ending malarkey, I'm okay with this ending.' However, if you have any inclination, you are more than welcome to read the alternate route of the story, and pick whichever ending pleases you the most.

Either way, you are the readers, so go for whatever you prefer!

Thank you all, and I hope to see you again soon! As always, your reviews give me life.