Saturday - 2nd of May, 1998.

The air was thick with smoke as Hogwarts fell.

"Hermione!"

Her head snapped towards Ron, who waved his arm at her.

There was no time to linger upstairs, among those fighting. They had to find the fangs.

If there had been a plan of defense, Hermione hadn't been informed. People pointed and shouted at one another as the wards failed. The peppering of counter-curses against the protective shell fizzled in a distant, muted way.

Hermione rolled her wand in her grip, as she debated her choice of action. She should stay up here, to protect those who needed it.

There was no use in waiting or watching.

Hermione tore her gaze away from the muddy sprawl of duels. She and Ron vanished into the bowels of the castle in search of the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry had been right behind them. He'd whispered to the door, and — and he followed them into the Chamber.

Hadn't he?

But he wasn't there with them, not as they stepped past the seal, nor as Ron spoke about the house elves he was worried for. Not as they kissed. Not as she felt her crush freeze over between their lips, their mutual adrenaline too thick for intimacy. It was hot and messy and their teeth clashed so hard she feared she might have lost one. He wasn't a good kisser, though she didn't know if such a thing were real.

More important things, she reminded herself. Her mouth tasted of sweat and whatever he'd eaten before they'd come here, and she'd lost her train of thought.

Harry.

Harry was meant to be with them, he was meant to wait for Nagini to fall. There had been a plan but that had gone by the wayside. He hadn't waited for them, hadn't come through the stone portal with them.

Her stomach sank as they rose back through the sewers to the castle proper.

As they resurfaced, chaos echoed all around them.

Moaning Myrtle laughed in a cruel way as she watched from her perch. She wriggled her brows and brimmed with joy.

"Harry ran out, something about going alone."

"Alone? Why!" Hermione shouted, as if it were Myrtle's fault.

"Well, I don't know! But if you see his ghost, tell him to come live with me," Myrtle sang after them. "I've always wanted a friend who won't leave me behind."

They sprinted out with the teeth in their arms. She was careful not to prick herself on the edges of the great shards of hollow bone.

Time cut as her vision clipped apart. They were in the hallway and then they were on the Grand Staircase.

She blinked and they were in the Great Hall.

There were dozens of voices, muted and mixed. She could taste smoke and burnt flesh.

The air was electric with magical residue and so much heat. Several stone knights laid shattered on the ground outside. She mistook one for a body in her haste. She breathed a sigh of relief until she saw the pale swath of skin tucked beneath it.

They had long brown hair and Hermione sighed with relief. Her chest seized seconds later, as she realized she'd been thankful someone else had died instead of Harry.

They twitched. She couldn't help them.

Not right now.

They needed to finish this.

A sound much like an aquarium shattering broke above. Ash and sparks flew from the sky, and she could hear the crackle of Apparation. The howls of wolves. The ground shook from the impact of the giants.

A group of students were huddled behind the corpse of a giant, which Hermione admired with morbid pride. Giants were immune to many magical spells. They would be safe there, at least for the moment.

Ron and Hermione slammed into place, their backs pressed to the still-warm flesh of the giant.

"Have you seen Harry?" Hermione looked at the nearest girl with wide blue eyes and long blonde hair. Luna looked tense for the first time ever. It didn't suit her.

"Neville killed Nagini," she said, her voice uneven. She raised a hand towards the middle of the courtyard, where Hermione spotted Voldemort and Harry.

The Death Eaters and those aligned with Hogwarts froze. The air thickened and sound muted. There was something off, as if her head had been angled the wrong way. She wanted to scream, to do anything. But she couldn't. She couldn't move, she couldn't breathe.

Air and sound vanished together in a great cloud of smoke. A Dark Mark ricocheted into the sky with a deafening crack, matched by each wizards' signature spell.

Avada Kedavra.

Expelliamus.

She was too late.

The fangs rolled from her arms with a clatter. She didn't hear it. She couldn't hear anything, not as she gripped Ron's bicep with stern hands. He pulled away from her, but the other students assisted her. They crushed together against the mass of the giant, to hide from the confrontation.

It was too dangerous to be in the middle of the courtyard. They didn't know what the smoke was, if it was a weapon or a curse.

She had been ready for her death, as a necessity of war. She wasn't the best duelist, not by any means, and she had no interest in killing others.

She just wanted to survive.

Both sides stilled as they waited to see who remained standing.

The smoke cleared as a blinding white light formed.

Voldemort stood, uneven and slow…

And then he fell to his knees.

Harry.

Hermione searched for Harry in the cleared smoke. She could see a hand and a leg, scraps of his clothes torn and bloody. She blinked a few times, unable to make sense of what she saw.

Voldemort collapsed altogether, flat on his face and messily sprawled.

If he was dead…

He laid before them like a bleached mannequin, pocked with black marks and a wide tattoo on his inner left forearm. He laid in the courtyard across from Harry, or what was left of Harry. She could see a hand, a foot… Pieces of Harry, which gradually turned to ash with the gust of the wind.

The Death Eaters who remained began to Disapparate in droves. Bellatrix, who had been behind her Lord, rushed forward and vanished with him. Hermione searched the dwindling crowd. All that remained were mismatched Snatchers and the dark creatures that had been recruited.

"That can't be right," Ron said, his voice shaken. "What the hell is this," he shoved Hermione away and rushed towards the offal spread across the courtyard.

Hermione didn't have to approach to know what had happened.

The Elder Wand had exploded from misuse or an incorrect master. The smoke, the backfired spells. Hermione stared at the aftermath, at where Harry had been standing moments ago.

Now all that remained were his shoes and several pieces of his clothes.

More than that, she wanted Harry to survive. He deserved it; he was owed a life with Ginny, with the Weasleys, and with the praise of the Wizarding world.

Her death was something she'd considered and measured, as the Mudblood beside Potter, as the insufferable girl with the wrong blood thrumming through her. She had almost died in First Year, and her Second Year - the near-deaths racked up, year by year. It was a matter of statistics, if she could find the variable in her favor.

Each year You-Know-Who rose, little by little, a whisper and a wail.

But it was so much more than that.

Friday - August 4th, 2001.

Hermione stirred in the thick summer air, her face taut from her restless sleep.

She sat up with a wet sense of dread. Her back drenched and her mattress rapidly cool to her touch. She winced, inwardly, her lips scrunched and her brows furrowed. Her room was like a compact oven and smelled of parchment and old shoes.

Crookshanks remained curled up as she stood up. It was a double bed that she'd crammed into the corner of her small room. Her lovely little boy had managed to take two-thirds of it for himself.

She smiled with what fondness she could manage, her expression still pinched as she grabbed her robe.

It was light and silk, a present from Luna who'd gotten back from Japan. Her thick terrycloth robe would make her burst into flames as the summer heat kicked into overdrive.

She stepped around several piles of books and a pile of parchments and caught herself on her small Ikea dresser. She'd not cleaned up the night before, nor had she bothered to change.

Her day at work piled onto her night of espionage.

Useless, honestly, and it hurt her to say it.

She exchanged her t-shirt and jeans for the robe, as she needed a shower. The murky morning air made her skin ache where the denim had bitten into her skin, and all she could smell was the woods and her sweat. She trudged all the way to the bathroom.

Her grimace widened as she heard the water running, to which she pressed her forehead to the door.

She was about to call through the thin door until she heard moans and wet slaps.

A low sound of disgust formed from the back of her throat.

She withdrew and resisted the urge to ward the door against sound. If she did, Ginny would get weird, and Wood would get even weirder, and the whole situation was weird to begin with.

Coffee first, then shower. Perhaps a slight Obliveration to ease her weary mind.

Then again, neither Ginny nor Wood seemed to care for her sanity.

Hermione would guess her best friend wanted to make the most of her alone time in the apartment. It was too small for two people, but there was safety in numbers.

She licked her lips apart as she brewed her coffee the 'Muggle way', as Ginny affectionately called it.

While she could conjure it, coffee was always lukewarm and bitter when she summoned it. Plus, it wasn't natural to her to default to magic for every little thing. She worried about where it'd come from, or if she'd stolen someone else's coffee from somewhere else and -

It was easier, to take the time to brew her coffee.

It was meditative.

Her fingers worked in small circles as she wove a golden string around her fingers. She formed luminescent sigils, which alternated as she touched different parts of her fingers. She racked her brain for any interesting facts from her patrol, but all she had was the man who'd not cleaned up after his dog.

That wasn't the sort of criminal activity she was after.

But The Order needed information, and Hermione could do information.

She had the time to sit around key locations, and the natural inclination towards sensing wards. Not to mention that an excuse to get out of her apartment was a blessed thing.

Ever since she'd walked in on Ginny and Wood kissing, they'd been more brazen, and Hermione needed to get out more.

And really, it was no different to sit outside of a suspected Snatcher hub than to sit at a coffee shop. At least stake-outs were free and useful. Perhaps a little dangerous, but she was clever and quick. She alternated her attention between her target location and whatever book she'd decided to bring along.

She'd spent the past month reading books on Necromancy and Dark Arts; mythology was at least a lighter subject, save for all the rape and torture and grief. They were stories, she could tell herself. They weren't first-hand accounts, taken down on the behalf of those who had fallen.

Her dream reemerged, the visual of Voldemort splayed under a cloudy sky, his legs and arms at painful angles, unmoving.

No one had expected that.

"Hermione!"

Hermione didn't look up, though she drew her robe close. She raised her attention to Ginny after a long moment, as the girl stood with wet hair and red marks.

The blush on her cheeks, the bites on her neck.

"Didn't think you'd be up, it's early."

Hermione smiled, her eyes glazed over as she pretended not to notice Wood peek out and then dip back away. "I'm always up early."

"Yeah, but, you were out late, I assumed you'd - oi!" She elbowed Wood who had said something from inside the bathroom. Hermione had missed the specifics of it.

From how she blushed, Hermione would suspect it was flirtatious.

"You're done with the bathroom, aren't you," Hermione said, not as a question.

"Um, did you want to go get breakfast together first?"

"I'd rather shower first," Hermione kept her smile in place, though it faltered. She didn't want to comment on Wood, on why he was here or what he and Ginny had been up to. She, politely, didn't care. Not in any measurable way.

So long as Ginny was happy.

It'd been so long since she'd been truly happy.

"One second!" And Ginny vanished into the bathroom, where Wood was hiding.

Hermione watched with patient attention. She really did just want to shower. While Scourgify could see to the grit and sweat of her patrol from the previous evening, there was a special catharsis to alone time in the shower. She'd cried in the shower most of her First Year, as it'd been private and relieving, to lose herself and her tears in the water.

She supposed the shower had its own catharsis for the not-really-a-couple couple in front of her.

Wood emerged with Ginny, though they looked angry. Each had a stern expression and a red face.

"Hello Wood," Hermione finished the last of her coffee, the golden thread of crocheted notes dissipated around her fingers. She could recall them later, to transcribe for the Order meeting later that day.

"Hermione," he said with a curt nod.

"He came over, to help with the shower, it was just, really broken, you know."

"If you bang on the pipe hard enough, it works." The corner of her lips twitched as she tried not to smile. It was a little tart of her, certainly, but she wasn't stupid.

Ginny and Wood spoke in tandem by mistake a few times until they vanished into Ginny's room.

Hermione slipped into the bathroom, her eyes narrowed at the scent of sex. She waved both her hands so hard that gusts of air took through the air. She turned to close the door and saw Wood rush past and out the front door of their apartment. He might have said goodbye. He'd been too busy in his exit.

Ginny had her face pressed to the frame of her bedroom door, as red as her hair.

"It's just a one-time thing," Ginny said as if she felt the weight of Hermione's stare.

"You've said that a few times now," Hermione said, her tone level. "It becomes more than a one-time thing if you do it more than once."

Ginny lifted her head, her eyes red and glossy.

Hermione's lips parted, but the younger girl vanished into her room. There was no right thing to say, really. She would have gone after her, to console her, but she didn't have the words. And she felt itchy and hot from her night in full clothes.

She closed the door behind her with a click. She peeled the robe off, to hook it onto the back of the door. Her towel was in here already, which she grimaced at. Wood had used it, she could tell from the splotches of wet on it.

Out of frustration, she waved her hand to summon one from her closet. They didn't have a dedicated linen cupboard, given that they had such limited space. Hermione lived out of her beaded purse, as she had for the past few years.

Summer made for the worst showers. She couldn't have it hot enough to work out the kinks in her back, but having it too cold made her miserable. She was stuck in a lukewarm shower, her skin too sensitive in all the deep red divots from her jeans and shirt.

Still, it was a far sight better than it had been, back when she'd slept in tents and in rosters.

But that was then.

Back when she'd had a crush on Ron and hope for Harry.

She hadn't had a nightmare about Hogwarts for months now. She suspected the hot night and claustrophobic clothes must have drawn it out of her, or she was sick. It was hard to pinpoint. Her sleep was usually dreamless and short, only three or four hours at a time.

She was a light sleeper nowadays. Any noise would wake her. Perhaps the shower had woken her.

Her hands pressed flat to the white tiles, her nails dug into the grout. Her forehead pressed to the warm tiles, the sticky dots on the bottom of the shower the only thing saving her from toppling over. She'd had too much coffee too quickly, and so she was stuck in this tunnel of hyper-focus and panic.

It could have been the dream, or the delayed shower, or the wasted night outside of an unremarkable warehouse.

The warehouse was somewhere they suspected Snatchers were stockpiling prisoners on behalf of the Death Eaters. It sat on the axis of a park and a warehouse, obscured and dark. It would be easy to sneak tens of people into the thick shrubs, to ferry them through the chainlink fences.

That was the theory, at least.

By the time she'd returned to the kitchen, Ginny was in her Quidditch robes and made up. Her brows and eyes always popped along with a subtle shade to her lips. It was more than Hermione could manage, as she'd forget she had it on and smear it around her face.

She was very prone to rubbing her eyes out of frustration when she read, and she'd end up with black smears around them like a raccoon.

Ginny had her legs curled up beneath her in her slim metal seat, the plastic edges all scuffed and bursting. She had a decisive frown on her face.

"I can't believe they're still on about this," Ginny groaned, the Daily Prophet sprawled in front of her.

Hermione took a seat beside Ginny at their four-person laminate table. The apartment was the peak of Muggle student accommodation, cramped and minimal. Neither girl had decorated yet, and it was unlikely that they would. This was their third apartment this year, though Hermione expected that number to double.

Marital Bliss With True Love's Kiss by Rita Skeeter.

Hermione grimaced so deeply she felt her chin regress into her neck. The photo on the front page showed Sally Smith with Gregory Goyle.

Sally was a pretty Hufflepuff girl Hermione had buddied with during Herbology fourth year, one who laughed like wind chimes and kept bread rolls to feed to the Great Squid in the summertime.

Goyle looked like a shoebox that'd been stacked onto a brick wall, with a marker impression of a man's face. He was boxy and broad, a perpetually miserable bully.

Even as confetti flew across the photo, and people cheered, and Sally - she looked to Goyle, a little too skittish for Hermione to buy into the shot.

"Are they still saying it's a rediscovered clause in some-such Muggle-Wizard agreement?" Hermione drawled, her tone thick with distaste. "The one that doesn't exist in any history book."

Ginny skimmed the article, her expression rancid. "A collective of magical elders in the early eleventh century forged an agreement with an old Muggle ruler, to breed - I hate the word breed, can we agree?" Ginny looked to Hermione, who nodded. "To breed a blended generation of understanding and compassion."

"Do they have proof of this agreement?"

Ginny snorted.

"I could say, oh, in the eighth century, they made it a crime to eat horseradishes on Tuesday." Hermione rocked back in her seat, her gaze locked onto the Daily Prophet. "This Muggle-Wizard agreement took place over nine hundred years ago if it is even real. That's hardly applicable today."

Ginny continued to read as Hermione watched, perturbed by her change in expression. She didn't want to be rude or to snatch it away. It wasn't as if the news would change between Ginny reading it and when she'd get her turn. Instead, she focused on braiding her wet hair, to keep it knotted and out of her face while it dried.

She should cut it all off, it wasn't as if she ever let it out. There was never an event to wear it up or to do anything with it.

"Brunch, yeah?" Ginny smiled, the paper scrunched and tossed onto the table between them.

"May I read it before we go?"

"It'll just piss you off Hermione."

"Good," Hermione said, her tone scathing. The void left by Harry and Voldemort was almost worse than the war itself. It pained her to think that, but without Harry and a narrow threat to target, the Order was directionless.

They had been founded to fight against Voldemort, and they'd won in that regard. Many considered the battle to have been successful. The papers were excited by the idea that Voldemort had been defeated and that things were back to normal.

They were idiots. Or blind, or both.

Voldemort's ideologies remained within the Ministry. Pius Thicknesse continued to crack down on the Muggleborn population, as evidenced by a curt article that stated a property in Diagon Alley had been seized from an 'opportunistic thief' who'd set up shop during the chaos of the war. It labored on how Muggleborns failed to understand the system, and how they'd 'stolen' the property from their half-blood partner.

As Hermione began to read the featured article, her jaw tightened.

The Ministry of Magic is pleased to announce that another successful pairing between a witch and a wizard of opposing bloodlines. The rift in the magical community, split by the clash between Harry Potter and You-Know-Who, has begun to mend through empathy and compassion. Mr. Gregory Goyle has extended great charity and kindness in his compliance in an arranged marriage based on the mercurial star signs lined on his wrist.

"When I saw our stars aligned, I knew it was meant to be," Goyle said, a single tear in his eye. The newly minted Mrs. Goyle smiled and flashed the constellation of Eridarus, which glitters in the bright lights of our studio.

"I'm so excited," said Mrs. Goyle. "To start my life in a real way. To be guided into the Wizarding community by someone who knows it better than I ever could."

Hermione blinked out of time, her mouth popped open.

The Marital Clause was struck early last year in an attempt to patch the fallout between our fractured world in the pursuit of a singular belief; the might of magic. While the public was wary of such a controversial method of alignment, there has been no broken vows and no complaints from those involved. Each pairing is beyond joyous. We wonder if an heir to the Goyle family will be arriving by the beginning of the new year.

All young Muggleborn women are encouraged to participate, as growing concerns for their safety have been mounted. Three Muggleborn women this month have gone missing. The Ministry is unable to do anything about it, as they have no way to trace the girls or to account for their disappearance. Each of these girls was noted to have refused their evaluation summons, and as such, they are culpable for any harm that befalls them.

"I told you," Ginny said as she stared at Hermione.

"They're saying," her voice shook. "That if we don't agree to marry whoever they tell us to, that we'll die, and it's… It's our own fault."

Ginny stared down their oven, which had a few burnt stickers on the glass. Likely from a child who'd lived here previously.

"They're killing us," Hermione said. "Immediately, or slowly, they're killing us, Ginny."

"You've got the Order Hermione," she huffed through her nose, her arms crossed over her chest. "We won't let them take you."

Hermione wanted to believe her, but it was clear.

The Wizarding community didn't want her; it never wanted her.