A/N: My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today.

R.I.P. Alan Rickman and David Jones. You both were inspirational. You were both making the world better by inspiring people. We shall be poorer for your losses.

Beta love: The Dragon and the Rose

Remembrance

In the end it was always the same. In the end they always left her. No matter how brilliant they were, how much light they brought into the lives of those who walked in their midst, or how much compassion they had for their fellow man, they lived their lives and then left her behind on their way to the next great adventure in the Infinite Beyond, so very far from her mortal reach.

Hermione looked out the over the familiar reach of the Dark Forest. Somehow, it always came back to this place—the place it had all ended and begun.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Ash and char were only things that flourished abundantly in the aftermath of the Second Great Wizarding War. Bodies were strewn about everywhere like dolls cast aside by a petulant child. Rubble lay in scattered heaps where it had fallen. Some faces of the dead were familiar. Some were not. There was a pervasive odour of the end of life as some bacteria struggled to survive now that their lifelong host had expired, still others fought greedily to consume the mortal remains which lay spread out before them like a bountiful buffet,. now that unluckiest victims of the war remained still and lifeless on the bloody ground. The stench of decay—the cycle of life returning to the earth from whence it had sprouted forth—hung heavy in the air.

Man, woman, child, house-elf, centaur, giant, Acromantula, and even the enormous body of the terrifying three-headed monster that Hagrid had once given the unlikely name of 'Fluffy' lay unmoving on the now-silent battlefield. The great equaliser had come for them all.

Hermione grasped the bundle in her arms, looking out over the strewn bodies and closed her eyes. As she opened them, her face was slack with a weary sort of sadness.

"Take them, Hermione," Harry had whispered hoarsely into her ear after she had disarmed him in the aftermath of his final fight with Voldemort. His victory had driven him to the thin edge of sanity, and he had started shooting blasts of wild, uncontrolled magic up into the air in his delirium and the sheer exhilaration of finally vanquishing his deadliest foe. At first, everyone had cheered at the powerful display, but gradually it became clear that Harry Potter was fast losing his tenuous grip on reality. He was shooting random piles of rubble and ruined pillars with abandon. He was beginning to seriously frighten the shell-shocked survivors.

Hermione, who seemed to realise that Harry was wrestling with the turbulence of his own conflicted emotional state, was also the only one with the bravery to confront the man who slew the Dark Lord Voldemort. She pointed her wand at her best friend as he spun around in dizzying circles, blasting everything in sight. "Expelliarmus!"

The great irony in using Harry's most sacred spell against him was not lost on Hermione. The Elder Wand no longer grasped tightly in his hand, Harry had collapsed as the weight of almost twenty years of being the Chosen One had fallen on him at once. As Hermione cradled his shaking body to her, he had pressed a cool stone into her hand and whispered where he had hidden his treasured invisibility cloak. "Take them, Hermione. Make sure that no one can ever find them again. Please. Not even me."

Hermione leaned down and kissed his forehead. "Rest, Harry."

Others had dragged Harry away to take care of him, and in the ruckus, Hermione disappeared into the still smoking ruins, past the piles of ash and charred battlefields, the Elder Wand in one hand and the Resurrection Stone in the other. No one had even noticed her taking her leave, and for once, she was quite glad of it.

Now, Hermione knelt down on the ground, placing the cloak on the ground and laying the Elder Wand the Resurrection Stone on top of it. The Deathly Hallows were all together, at long last. The lifelong quest of many a wizard and witch lay before her, only unlike so many before her, she had them all before her. Power untold was hers for the taking: it was the power over Death himself.

The air suddenly grew as cold as the frozen north. Her breath came in frigid wisps of vapour. Her fingers tightened as she rubbed them together vigorously. Death was close. He had always been close by. War had called to him like a siren's song—irresistible to the end.

Dark, tattered cloth fluttered as if by wind, but there was none. Long, skeletal finger bones, too unnatural for a mere mortal human, stretched through the air before her as if reaching through Life to seek her pale, fragile neck. "Are you here to mock me, human?" a deep voice rumbled. It was angry and desolate. "Are you here to bend me to your insufferable will?"

Hermione cast her eyes down with reverence and humility. "No," she answered softly.

"What, then," the brooding entity sneered, "could you possibly desire of Death? Return of your beloved dead, perhaps? Restoring parents to the orphaned child? Give life to the murdered souls here on this battlefield? Restore the life of your loving parents who died tragically believing they were Mr and Mrs Wilkins of Perth, Australia?"

Hermione winced, closing her eyes. "No."

"Immortality and a promise I shall never come calling for your soul?" Death mocked. "Restoration of one half of a twinned whole?"

Hermione opened her eyes, squaring her jaw. She met the skull-like face of Death and shook her head in the negative. "I bring you back your Instruments," she said with grim smile. "Please, will you just take them?"

Death's grim, skeletal countenance pressed up against the chilled, skin of her face, the glowing pits of his eye sockets seemed to be made of infinite darkness, the blackest black of the Void. "Why would you do this?"

Hermione stared into the blackness of Death's questioning eyes. "Throughout history, Death has always had His Symbols—the scythe, the Hallows, the skull… the very visage that you wear. Every time a mortal has laid hand upon them and attempted to use them for their own reasons, calamity has followed close in their wake. These things were not meant to be used by mortal hands, to accomplish selfish mortal goals. They were not meant to be used with short-sighted mortal vision. Human beings were never meant to harness the power of such things. These are your accoutrements. They belong to you."

Death's skull visage pulled back. His eyes, black as pitch, seemed to narrow despite appearing to be just hollowed pits of darkness. He stared down at the ground to the Hallows lying at his feet. "You must hand them to me. I cannot—they must be returned to me entirely willingly." His bleached bone fingers extended to her, somewhat hesitatingly.

Hermione pulled herself up, gathered the Hallows, and stood. She took a deep breath and placed the bundle into Death's waiting hands. "I give these back to you, freely and of my own will. The wand, the stone, and the cloak."

Death did not move. He was as still in the way only death could be. Then, his bony fingers slowly closed over the Hallows. "Countless years have passed since I believed three brothers to be worthy of a test given. So, I did give three of my Hallows to three mortal men. I believed, erroneously, that they would be wise enough to know that what I gave them was not theirs to keep. Perhaps, I believed they would use them to escape my Realms with my own blessing. But, when I waited at the borders of my Domain for them to realise they could not take my Hallows beyond the borders without consequence, they did do the unexpected."

Hermione dared to look up, searching Death's countenance as he told her his story.

"One took my wand and killed a man, not a day out from my Domain," Death recalled. "One, lured the spirit of his dead wife to him, desperate for her company and unwilling to wait to meet her again one day in the afterlife. Outside my Domain, the stone does not manifest completely. All you see are shades of what once was. Memories. Imprints. Shadows of the heart."

Death looked into Hermione's face, the blackness in his eye sockets had turned into blue flames.

"The cloak allows me to pass unseen in places where the very sight of Death causes many more to throw themselves into my embrace while trying desperately to escape it. The paradox is strong. And one mortal man used it to hide from my gaze for well over a hundred years. Then, one day, he realised that while he could not die, he was still growing older and more infirm. He passed his cloak to his son, unwilling to part with his prize unless it went to his kin, then walked away to find me at last." Death turned his head to stare over the battlefield. "Countless years have passed. I have remained… fragmented and forced to live countless mortal lives in punishment for my—erroneous judgement and faith in the conscience of mere mortals. I have paid a very dear price, living a hundred-thousand lifetimes and experiencing the pain of a mortal demise many times untold, all for allowing my Hallows to rest with those who could not… would not deign to return them."

Hermione closed her eyes. "I am not an immortal. I cannot claim to know what Death learns of mortals like us when forced to live and die as one. I would like to hope, however, that perhaps you found something redeeming in all your lifetimes."

"In all the spans of time between my loss and now, not one," Death intoned, "even one who knows they cannot be trusted with them, has ever been able to give them back. Not one… until now."

Hermione looked up. "Harry asked me take them away. He knew."

Death's expression, eerie on a skull-like face, managed to smirk. "You, Hermione Granger, are the one here, now, giving Death back his most cherished toys."

Hermione's brows furrowed, but she nodded grimly.

"You ask for nothing for yourself?" Death asked.

Hermione shook her head. "Your taking back what has always been yours is payment enough. That no one else will be tempted by their power is its own reward."

Death slung the cloak over his shoulders and all the tatters in his robes were instantly mended. Finally, after countless millennia, it was finally whole again. He took the stone and set it into one of his empty eye sockets, and then he placed the wand at the bottom of his rib cage, replacing the missing floating rib that had remained unnoticed until that moment.

"And if not for yourself, Hermione Granger," Death asked. "What would ask of Death for their sake?"

"I would ask that Harry be allowed to live a peaceful life after all the loss and pain he has suffered alone," she said. "Let him have the chance to experience happiness—not as the Chosen One or the Boy-Who-Lived, but as himself, Harry James Potter. That he be allowed to make his own decisions and live his life exactly as he chooses. I would not ask for him to live an unnaturally long life. I would not have him forget how precious life is. Let his dreams no longer be troubled. Let his parents' lost lives no longer haunt him. I would want that for him: a good life."

"Have you no one?" Death asked. "Anyone to make the melancholy in your young heart lighten?"

"I did once, during the war," Hermione confessed, her eyes flickering with emotion. "He never knew. I thought him brilliant. I wished, many times, that he might finally see me for who I really was, but it was simply not to be."

"Why did you never tell him?"

"He was a teacher," Hermione replied sadly. "He hated me."

"He was an imbecile," Death replied almost too suddenly, causing Hermione to look up at him, confused.

"For a moment, you sounded just like him," she said after a while. "He'd call me insufferable and a know-it-all."

Death stared at her for a long moment. "Being who and what you are brought you here, Hermione. Being a know-it-all told you how to find me in a battlefield of war. Being one who knows more than the average mortal is not so horrible a thing. The foolish would have you charge obliviously into the jaws of danger. The idiot would do it. You are neither of those things."

"To think," Hermione said. "I get my first real compliment from Death."

Death turned his skull-like face to her. "It was long overdue, if mine was the first you ever heard."

"My parents used to, but," Hermione started to say. "They don't really count because they are your parents. They are supposed to support their children. I believed them, but—"

"Not the same as having a complete stranger pay you respect?" Death asked.

Hermione nodded. Her face became sad. "I hope Harry is okay."

"Here on the battlefield, surrounded in death, and standing by Death," Death boggled, "and you still think of others before yourself."

"It's a failing," Hermione admitted.

Death placed a bony finger on her lips. "It is a strength, Hermione. Let no one tell you otherwise."

He stared into her eyes. "I will make you bargain—a test. It is one of which I have not given since my Hallows were taken from me."

Hermione perked, curious.

"Look upon my countenance," Death said quietly. "Gaze upon my true faces, and if you can still agree to leave this life behind you, travel with me, stand by my side and remind me what it is to be human, then I will give your friend his lifetime. He will have one life, his own, but it end as all lives end—free of my influence until it is time to bring him Home."

"Travel with you?" Hermione said with wonder. "Is that possible?"

Death stared at her without bothering for politeness.

"I'm sorry, I just—" Hermione gave a forced smile. "I just realised it must be so lonely, going from life's end to life's end with so few willing to greet you with simple kindness."

Death turned away, his black gaze glowing across the battlefield. "Regardless of your choice, Hermione. For your service to me, I will grant you your wish for your friend—a wish made with all selflessness, even when the riches of avarice lay before you."

Hermione slowly reached up her hand to touch Death's face, his fingers tracing the smooth, bony contours of his skull. "Your face is so warm," she boggled.

She tentatively pulled the cowl back from his skull, staring at his features with intense curiosity. "I suppose it would be foolishly mortal of me to even consider turning down a request from Death himself, wouldn't it?"

Death chuckled. "You are hardly… a typical mortal. I will," he paused, "tolerate your insatiable curiosity.

"I would," Hermione said suddenly. Her eyes cast skyward to where a small beam of sunlight hesitantly peeked out from behind a thick shroud of ominous grey clouds. "I would see the true face of Death and make my own choices."

Death cast his bony fingers across his skull, splaying them across his fearsome countenance like the legs of a spider. He stared out at her from between his fingers. "As you wish, Hermione Granger." Death removed his mask and allowed Hermione to gaze upon his true face.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Death caught Hermione Granger up against himself as her legs suddenly gave out from beneath her, pitching her precariously backwards. He cradled her in his long arms, staring down at her with his intense black gaze. Her body was twitching slightly, perhaps overloaded by the flood of overwhelming stimuli. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused as her hands clutched at his robes with strong grip.

"It's really you," she whispered, her fingers tracing the newly-revealed contours of his true face. Dark, oily black hair framed his startlingly pale skin. His well-formed lips pressed into a firm line that many had mistakenly interpreted as an expression of disgust. Her eyes were focused again, and she gazed up at him with such heart-wrenching joy and relief. "It's really, really you."

"I have worn many faces, Hermione," Death said. "All of them have been hated or loathed in one way or another. All have been misunderstood examples of unreasoning the hate in humanity. I have never once been glad of this one until now."

With a tender brush of his pale, almost-skeletal hands, he caressed her soft cheek. "Will you stay with me? Be my conscience when I forget what it was like to be human? Be my heart when I forget I could once feel? Remind me that once I was betrayed, but then, one mortal, compassionate, courageous little know-it-all redeemed them all."

"You forgot insufferable," Hermione said, a smile tugging on her lips.

Death stared down at her affectionately. "Quite sufferable."

"I would," she answered. "Stay with you. Discover so many things I could learn by being close to you… and share them all with you."

"You would bind yourself to Death, of your own free will?"

"I would."

"You would have to leave this life behind," Death told her honestly.

"I have no regrets in this life," Hermione said. "I came to terms with the prospect of my eventual death long before now."

Death neared her face, the length of his aquiline nose touching hers. "Then, perhaps, you can come to terms with your life with me, Hermione."

Hermione smiled at him, pure sunlight pouring from the warmth of her regard. "I would stand with you, Death. I will travel at your side from life to life, treasuring life because I have known death."

Death hovered close. He pressed his lips to hers. She shuddered against him as her hands clutched his robes. His kiss deepened, and she let herself fully experience his all-encompassing embrace. He slowly lowered her to the ground as her skin paled, her eyes fluttered closed, and her hands loosened their grip upon his robes.

He lay her reverently down upon the still and silent battlefield. His long, bony fingers caressed her riotously curly hair. The sun overhead burst from the clouds and showered its radiance down upon them. Suddenly, Hermione sat up, her shade rising from her still body.

"Hermione," he greeted, his smiling dark eyes meeting hers. He held out his hand.

Hermione slowly put her hand into his, and it became entirely solid and warm. She looked into his eyes with wonder, placing her hands to his cheeks. "Death,"she greeted.

Death smiled at her, pressing his lips to her forehead. "Call me Severus."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Death and Hermione stood as attendees at Hermione Jean Granger's funeral. Her body, still and cold with her arms folded gently across her chest in rest, was found when they swept the battleground one last time in search of any remaining victims of the war. No one recognised them. She was buried next to the graves of Wendell and Monica Wilkins in a small hilltop cemetery in Australia.

Harry remained long after the majority of the mourners had paid their last respects and left. He looked sombre and inconsolable.

"I never meant for you to die, Hermione," Harry whispered to the headstone. He tore at his hair, kneeling down at her grave in tearful sorrow.

Suddenly, a small rock hit him upside the head.

"Ow!"

Harry picked up a small stone with a hauntingly familiar design on it. Then, it came to him. It was the same rock Hermione had thrown at him in Hagrid's pumpkin patch to warn him to get his arse moving.

Harry looked around him frantically, but no one was there.

Suddenly, a brilliant smile spread across Harry's face. "I love you, Hermione. Be safe, wherever you are."

As the messy-haired wizard walked out of the cemetery and Disapparated, two figures stood in each other's company, overlooking the quiet graveyard. The shorter woman placed her hand in the other's hand, and the tall, slender man with the oh-so-dark eyes wrapped his black cloak around her. In a billowing swirl of fabric, they disappeared from sight.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- Always. -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/N: Rest in peace, Alan Rickman. You will always be my voice of Snape.