A/N: Well, here's the last chapter you guys! Once more, sorry for the ridiculously long wait...I'm hopeless, aren't I?

I really hope that you've all enjoyed reading this story, and that you won't be too disappointed with its ending! A very big thank you goes out to all of you who have dropped me a review, or who have quite simply read through every chapter!

And another huge thank you goes to WeasleyForMe for being such a wonderful beta-reader!

Happy reading!

Jess xx

Disclaimer: If I were J.K, it wouldn't have been necessary for me to write a story to help cope with Fred's death, as he quite simply would not be dead. As it is, the many months of mourning I have gone through prove otherwise.

Letting Go

Many months later…

Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong. When that stupid wall had caved in and everything had been engulfed in dust, she had seen him disappear, but she had still hoped…

During the entire length of the battle, the only sentiment that had been present within Hermione had been numbness. When she had destroyed that cup, she hadn't felt a thing; when she had kissed Ron in that one horrible moment of weakness, not a single emotion had bubbled up inside of her…not even the essential comfort she had been searching for in the first place. When she had cast those spells, fought all those Death Eaters and watched the people she knew die, she hadn't been able to make herself react once. Even seeing the vacant looks on the faces of all those departed souls, lying on the cold stone floor with eyes wide open, but unable to see anything ever again…even that hadn't been enough to wipe away the dead feeling that had been clawing away at her heart all night long.

And when she had thought Harry to be dead…she had been sent into such a state of shock, that her entire body had just shut down, leaving no place for grief or terror or anything at all.

And then, when Harry had finally killed that wretched shell of a man, she had fallen into such a stupor that the mere idea of feeling had been deemed completely foolish by her brain.

But now, standing on top of what felt like a giant precipice, now something had found a way to break through her frozen thoughts, and plunge her into a bloodcurdling abyss of emotion.

Fear, had somehow found her.

Without having decided to do so, she was running with no idea as to where she was headed. Her lungs, which still felt as if they had shut down, were searing with pain, and her heart was pounding harder than the drum roll played before a man is hanged…

Every step she took seemed to be leading her to death. With every step, the noose would tighten around her neck, and the pounding would grow louder; grow faster.

And then, she saw him.

She saw him, lying on the ground, like all of those bodies she had already seen during this damn night.

Except, he was different.

When Hermione saw him, unmoving, with a smile still adorning his lips, she didn't feel numb. Her vision didn't stay cloudy, like it had been for hours. She wasn't deaf to the world anymore; everything seemingly put on mute for her sake. No, when she saw him, she could feel, see and hear, everything.

She could feel her heart rip apart, stealing her breath away and bringing unthinkable pain to every nerve in her body.

She could see every detail of his face with icy clearness: the deadness of his eyes, the small trickle of blood sneaking out of the corner of his smiling lips, the color draining away from his already pale complexion.

She could hear everything around her with horrible precision, as if somebody had suddenly spun the world's volume button to its maximum…George's desperate sobs pressing in against her eardrums… the sound of Ginny's murmured words, trying to comfort her even though she was crying herself.

It was too much. She didn't want it. She wanted the numbness back. She didn't want to see him anymore. She wanted black, she wanted nothing, she wanted out.

But, there is no out. He's gone. Fred's gone.

"Oh, God," she choked, before spinning on her heel and running out of what was once the Great Hall.

She ran until she had reached a deserted corridor, filled with nothing but ruble and dust. Tears streaming down her face, she knelt and picked up a stone, angling it so that it's sharpest point was facing her. She took a deep breath…

And smashed it as hard as she could against her skull.

A soft sigh escaped her lips as she fell back into darkness, and dreamed…

"I'm so sorry, Fred," I cried.

He was crying too, quiet sobs escaping his soft lips and making my heart ache worse than I had ever known it could. I had just told him that I was leaving the very next morning, and he was taking the news just as badly as I had known he would.

"Why?" he demanded through tears. "Why do you have to leave? Stay with me, Hermione. Please. Please, don't go. Don't leave me…"

I shook my head and buried my face into my hands. "I have to go, Fred. You know I do. I have to do this for Harry, for everyone…for you."

His arms were around me, and we were crying together, our bodies shaking, and breaking at the same time.

When he released me, he kissed me with more passion than I had thought was possible. I knew then that he accepted my decision, but that he'd never let me go.

We didn't break apart for one second that night. I gave myself up to him in every way possible, both physically and emotionally.

When I woke up the next morning, he was still sleeping. I had never wanted to wake him up more, and yet I knew that I couldn't. Our goodbyes had been made. I couldn't face another one.

So, I kissed him on the cheek and gently got out of bed. I smoothed the sheets over on my side before looking at him once last time.

He was smiling in his sleep.

A final tear managed to escape, as I pulled on his bathrobe and walked out the door.

"I'll see you soon," I promised silently, as I shut the door behind me and walked off to find Harry and Ron.

Of all the things I remembered to bring along with me that morning, my heart was not one of them. It stayed behind, forgotten but safe.

When Hermione awoke, the first thing that crossed her mind was how overly noisy everything was. There were buzzing noises everywhere, and they seemed to be growing louder and louder by the second.

She slowly opened her eyes to try and see what was making all of that racket, but found that her vision was too blurry to see anything at all, except for blinding fluorescent lights. Groaning, she brought a hand up to shield her eyes from their brightness.

Suddenly, all the noises stopped. Hermione sighed in relief. "Much better," she whispered.

"Hermione?"

She jumped, her hand sliding off of her face and exposing her to the lights again. But their glow wasn't as bad now, as dark figures were leaning over her and protecting her from their intensity.

"Hermione, are you awake?"

Hermione wished that whatever was making that loud noise would stop it. Her head was pounding horribly.

"I don't think that her thoughts are coherent enough to understand us, yet."

Hermione frowned. The dark shapes were getting clearer. She could see red, lots of it, and someone with glasses too. She even recognized the room; she was in the Immediate Care ward in St.Mungo's. One particular figure kept her attention though, and she kept herself focused on it as her vision slowly came back to her.

Somehow, she knew that face. She knew those freckles, those lips, those eyes and that nose.

Something within herself clicked.

"Fred?" she croaked.

Pain shot across the familiar eyes, as they gazed into hers. "No," he whispered. "No, Hermione. I'm George. Fred's…Fred's gone."

The pain that had been present in her head seemed to reach out to every other part of her body, as terrible memories flooded her mind… memories that she didn't want. Memories of Fred, lying on the ground…of Fred, dead.

"Let me go back," she said softly.

The face that was closest to hers that she now recognized as Harry's frowned. "Go back where, 'Mione?" he asked.

"The blackness," she mumbled. "Please. He was with me, there."

A silent tear slowly made its way down her frozen cheek. She sniffled a bit. The cold was finally starting to register somewhere within her numb thoughts. She delicately placed another single white rose upon the monument and deftly made her way back up the tiny dirt road that lead to the Burrow.

The Burrow…

Another tear slipped out of her hazel eye as the thought of her second home came to mind. It just wasn't the same anymore.

Nothing was the same anymore, now that he had left her.

She came to a sudden stop. Her subconscious mind had led her off of her usual path, and had instead brought her to her favorite spot on Earth.

The tears began to fall heavily now. She sat down in the snow under a great big tree, now devoid of all its normally beautiful leaves and flowers so that it could no longer shelter her from the falling snowflakes.

Nothing could shelter her anymore. Nothing could protect her from the biting cold, from the absolute deadness that she felt. Only he could've protected her… but he was gone. And now, not even his tree, their tree could console her.

A sob escaped from her lips as she uttered his beloved name, so familiar to her tongue. It felt empty now, somehow bare as if it had been stripped from all of its previous love and joy.

She let her head fall heavily into her arms.

She couldn't bare this pain anymore.

Not without him.

"Why? Why did you leave me? Oh God, I need you so much Fred…"

It had been like this for as long as she could now remember. Every day, she'd come here, and every day she'd cry. Every day was harder, was longer, and was colder. Even George had stopped visiting daily. Everyone had returned to their lives, and yet she couldn't do the same. She was trapped here, somewhere between the living and the dead.

She shakily pulled out her wand from her coat's pocket and stared at it.

Why not?

She had tried, she had tried so hard to live again, but it just wasn't working. Why not just give up? Why not go join him?

The wand was at her temple, and the curse was on the tip of her tongue, when she heard someone cry.

"Hermione! Hermione, where are you?"

She gasped, and stowed the wand back into her pocket, just as Ron found her.

Standing before her, his eyes softened as they read the distress in hers.

"Come on, 'Mione. Everyone's been worried about you. You promised you'd try and have fun tonight."

Hermione nodded, and reached up to grab his outstretched hand, a feeling of disappointment gnawing away at the pit of her stomach.

Every time she got close to doing it, something would come along to stop her. Why? Why couldn't the universe just let her go? It had already taken everything she had ever wanted away from her. Why couldn't it just give her a release? A simple way out?

Just as she was getting up, something caught her eye. A single leaf, perched upon one of the lower braches of their tree, was still as green as if it were summer. A single little leaf had managed to survive, when everything around it had withered and died.

A thought then occurred to Hermione, the first clear one she had had in ages. Maybe the world kept on stopping her, because she wasn't meant to abandon it just yet.

Maybe, although it was quite possible that she was imagining things, but maybe Fred didn't want her to join him right away. Could he truly be the one who had prevented all of her attempts? His time had come… was it feasible that hers hadn't yet? That she was meant to hang around here, and to go on…without him?

Was it possible that he wanted her to survive, just like that solitary leaf had? That he was somewhere up there, completely at peace, just as he had described heaven would be, and that he was watching over her?

Could that really be?

Intertwining her fingers with Ron, she let herself be led to the Burrow. And as she stepped inside its warmth and saw all of the smiling faces around her, she even permitted herself to smile as well, for the first time in months. Her cheeks ached at the strange movement.

"Where've you been, Hermione?" Ginny asked anxiously, wrapping her into a hug.

Hermione just shrugged. "Out, having a talk with Fred," she answered simply.

That night, she did have fun. She did smile, and she did laugh. But every moment, she was thinking of him.

She would live, she would love, and she would somehow be happy again, if only for his sake.

For him, she could do it. For the man she loved and who went down laughing, she'd find a way.

It would never be perfect…how could one truly be perfect while missing half of one's self, anyway? But she knew that he would've wanted it that way. He wouldn't have wanted her to give up, and to move to New York and to become a prostitute, like she had threatened to do so, so many months ago. He would've said, "Ah, but that's no good, babe! Everyone knows how ridiculously priced a flat there can be!"

And then he would've told her to slap a smile on her face and to just keep on living, and to just be happy. Because that's what Fred was all about really, when you got down to it, what he would always work so hard to do: Fred made others happy. Whether it was with jokes or with kisses, he always knew how to spread joy.

So, in a final act of love, she would be the one to make him happy now. She would live her life, and enjoy every moment of it, and even go so far as to enjoy it twice as much, for the both of them.

And that, was a promise… babe.

The End