A curse had struck hard stone and shattered it, sending pieces large enough to crush raining down on his head. It had buried him and smothered him and left nothing of his sharp smile and flaming hair to be seen. But hope is a hard thing to kill. So she had dug him out, working with others whose faces she couldn't remember, levitating stones and pushing them away with her bare hands until her palms and fingers were scraped and bleeding. When she found him, he was dead, his heart stopped and his face still as the stone he had been killed under. Someone wailed when they saw him. The world wasn't warm enough without Fred Weasley, and so maybe without even knowing what she was doing, Hermione started CPR.

It was the muggle way of doing things, but Hermione was no mediwizard and there were none around to help, so she couldn't do anything but press her hands on his still chest until she could feel his ribs creak and crack under her fingers. He was dead for two minutes, and then all of a sudden he wasn't. He didn't open his eyes, or do much of anything but begin to breathe again, his heartbeat weak but real under her fingertips. She left him lying there, shouting for someone else to come and take over while she ran off to re-join the fighting. Blood was smeared on his pale cheek, and she wasn't sure if it was hers or his.

She didn't think of him again until the end of the battle, Harry alive and Voldemort's corpse a still thing on the ground. That was when she let herself weep to have been able to keep as many of them as she had. No one with red hair was laying in the rows of the dead and it had to be enough, because Teddy Lupin was an orphan now, and her parents would never remember her name. It had to be enough.

Fred was still unconscious, and George was at his side, not weeping, but whispering something into his twin's ear, his fingers wrapped tight around Fred's wrist like he was leading him somewhere, or keeping him in place. The smile on his face didn't quite reach his eyes. When he saw Hermione and the tears on her face, the smile turned to something more genuine, more soft, and too achingly grateful to bear.

She settled to the ground near him, tucking a stray curl behind her ear and turned away from the sight of both of them, of the hall, of all of the people mourning the dead, and too beaten down to truly celebrate the end of the war that had darkened all of their lives. She looked toward the light streaming through the windows and the holes blasted in the solid rock of the place that had been her second home for most of a decade.

She didn't notice Fred's eyes open weakly, his pale fingers stretching out to close the distance between them and touch the bare skin of her side revealed by the gap between her jumper and her jeans. Like the spark of static electricity, something jolted from his fingers to her hip, and she turned to look at them, the echo of electricity thrumming through their three connected bodies. Hermione found two shocked pairs of blue eyes locked on her face, two spots of color blooming on Fred's otherwise pale cheeks.

She opened her mouth to speak, without quite knowing what in the world she would say, but her words were cut off before they could begin, Harry calling out to her. She rose to her feet, turned on her heel and fled.

Ron and Harry were standing together, looking at the wand held in Harry's hand, but when she approached at what could charitably be called a trot, Harry glanced up. His eyes flicked between herself and where she had been. She didn't dare look back to see what kind of state the twins were in behind her. Ron remained oblivious until she nearly bumped into him. He put out a hand to steady her, catching her hand in his.

Hermione flinched away, expecting another shock, but felt only Ron's warm, rough fingers against her suddenly sweaty palm.

"You ok 'Mione?" Ron asked weakly, but didn't wait for her response. A pleasant answer was pretty rare these days.

"We were going to talk about the Elder Wand," Harry said, with a jerk of his head to indicate stepping out of the hall, "away from all this." The look on his face was too somber, too hollow for someone who had just won a war. Appropriate, perhaps, for someone who had recently died. She couldn't do much but follow the two of them mutely out of the hall.

Behind her the twins watched her disappearing figure, hair bursting from a braid, grime covering every inch they could see. She slipped out of the hall with Harry and Ron in tow.

"Bloody hell Forge, what just happened?" George's voice was strained, a feeling like roiling water still unsettling his stomach. Fred could do little more than nod weakly in agreement.

"Bloody hell."