A/N: I don't own Harry Potter. Obviously.

Really quick: This is rated M for good reasons. I'll throw up a TW if anything gets graphically violent or sexual in a chapter (spoiler, it's mostly going to be violent). If you are interested in the story but are not comfortable with reading these things, send me a message or leave a comment and I will send you an abridged version of the chapter you'd rather skip.

I'm only posting this because I love comments.

"A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead."

Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

Part 1: The Devil

Chapter 1: The Cleverest Witch

Updated 7/16/18

Sunday, September 1st. Morning.

War is not an every-day event. At least not the way that they are doing it.

Sometimes, she thinks war is a storm, like a tornado or a hurricane, because it is enormous and destructive but also there-and-gone, sudden and quick and painful. Lightning, maybe. A landslide. Sometimes, war is a fire, because it consumes whatever it touches and, in life's great unfairness, chooses what it takes at random. She cannot fathom the destruction of it most of the time. She thinks about countless bodies piled to an uncaring sky and wood splintering across innumerable continents.

War, it turns out, is nothing like it is in books.

War doesn't communally and evenly destroy everything. Once, on a battlefield, she fell face first into a bush of perfect roses and she was the first one to either notice them or wreck them, despite the blood soaking the dirt around them. Nothing, save for her face crashing into them, damaged the roses in any way.

Hermione Granger is not unharmed. In the last battle (the one with the roses), she froze with her wand in the air and a spell on her lips, unsure if she could cast a killing curse. The only thing running through her mind was who am I to decide who lives and who dies? And she didn't have an answer. The Death Eater she was facing took the chance her momentary indecision gave and blasted her off her feet and fifteen feet away (into that rose bush). The blood that soaked into the rose bush's roots was hers. She's spent the last two weeks kicking herself over it.

She is still technically a patient at St. Mungo's where she has been since her most recent in-battle fuck-up. They've decided—Kingsley and the others—that she is more a liability than an asset in a fight in her current state, but she still needs to feel useful. So she has been released with a keeper to the ministry, where she is to go through everything they've confiscated from Death Eater estates and look for anything useful in the fight. She is putting her massive intellect to use, they tell her, and she repeats that phrase over and over again to herself as if they are a prayer. As if repetition will make her pride sting any less.

Brightest witch of her age and she is a panicked idiot in a fight.

The ministry has an entire floor full of dark objects, and the auror who is acting as her keeper today holds the door open to one of the warded and locked rooms, motioning for her to go in first while he locks the door behind them. The room itself is so big the walls are lost in darkness and the ceiling vaults into obscurity, but somehow it still seems cluttered. There are mountains of jewelry she isn't allowed to touch with bare hands and mirrors covered in thick, dark sheets. Boxes are piled on top of trunks, packages perilously perched on the tops of dressers, and wardobes so tall she could not possibly reach the top of them even if she stood on the auror's shoulders and stretched as high as she could. There are books stacked like towers, clustered together and looking like small cities, labeled by where they came from and when: Lestrange Estate, October 1982. Thornwood Manor, July 1990. Black Townhouse, October - December 1985.

She decides to begin her research with the dark arts books because reading about dark magic isn't as dangerous as touching dark objects. Maybe she'll find something that will help her go sort through the rest of the magical objects in this room. She isn't sure she'll be allowed to take anything more dangerous than a bookmark back to St. Mungo's when her hour is up, anyway. Besides, reading is something that she has always done well, even when she can't do anything else.

She runs her fingers over a stack of spines, tracing titles and bindings, trying to decide which ones to read first when a dark red cover snags her interest and gives her pause. It is halfway down a stack labeled Malfoy Manor, May 1995. She does some mental math. Seized from the Malfoy estate after Lucius Malfoy was sent to Azkaban when they battled in the department of mysteries just over two years ago, only a few floors below where she is standing now. She grins to herself as she imagines what any of those pureblooded bigots would say if they saw her muggleborn hands all over their precious belongings.

The cover is the color of dark wine and reminds her of the Gryffindor common room. It is smooth, well-oiled leather and not so thick that she has difficulty pulling it out of the stack, but not so thin that it feels weightless in her hands when she examines it. It is perfect. It is where she will start. She puts it into her bag.

She has just enough time to collect three other books before they floo back to St. Mungo's where she will remain until someone can figure out how to close the X-shaped gash across her back, even though she has championed for her own release, saying it hasn't hurt for days and the beds are needed for the really sick and injured, but no one listens.

Sunday, September 1st. Night.

She still dreams about that battle—the one that's landed her in the hospital while her friends are out there. When she recalls it, though, it comes in fragments, like a shattered stained-glass window with no light behind it. When the spell catches her, she is sure that she has been cut in half, split into pieces from the pain. She's flying and then falling, and then she's looking upside down at a mostly-intact rosebush. It's her blood at its roots. She screams and suddenly Harry is there with her. His eyes, green like a cat's, wide and afraid, are the last things she sees before she passes out from the pain. She generally wakes up screaming and clawing at the agony shooting through her whole body as the cuts on her back bleed through the gauze.

This is, in fact, exactly what has just happened. The healer, finally done changing her bandages, has bustled out. Hermione is waiting for the Dreamless Sleep potion to take effect, but she is fighting to stay awake because, even though she knows it's useless, she doesn't want to dream anymore. She just can't seem to shut her brain off on command anymore. She's scared of the nightmares, which come even with the potion pumping through her body. She tries to focus on happier memories, hoping it will translate to happier dreams.

She thinks about Bill and Fleur's wedding, where she danced with Victor and with Ron until her feet ached and then fell asleep giggling with Ginny about the way Harry had stared at her all night long. When she thinks about it, she is still surprised that this was the same night that Kingsley became minister of magic . Scrimgeour was caught unawares by a pack of Death Eaters and was killed by Voldemort himself. That was a month ago. Two weeks after that, she was split open. All of it seems so long ago. Summer is ending. The days are getting shorter. Hermione Granger is stuck in a hospital bed, eyelids growing heavy, while a war is just starting all around the country.

Monday, September 2nd. Afternoon.

The healer finally leaves and so she pulls her bag off of the bedside table and rummages until she finds the book she has been wanting to read since yesterday.

She examines the cover of the book first. This is how she has always done it—for as long as she can remember, anyway—she runs her right index finger up the spine, turns the book in her hands, examining the front cover and then the back, inhaling deeply the smells of cut paper and ink.

This book is, as she first surmised, perfectly smooth, red-stained leather. There is no title on the spine or front cover, and the only blemish on the front is a small constellation of what are probably freckles from the original animal. The corners are sharp, and so the book must not be very old. Either that, or it is very well preserved with a book-keeping spell that she really ought to learn. She flips the book into her left hand, wincing slightly as the shift in pressure upsets the scabbing along her spine. The wound is freshly covered in several new salves that are supposed to help, but have so far only succeeded making the entire room stink like camphor and cow manure.

The book's back cover is as red and perfect as the front cover, but there is a puckering—a flaw in the leather, maybe—in the right corner. She squints at it. It looks like a bullseye, round, a dark circle and a slightly lighter halo around it, feathered at the edges. She runs her finger over it. It is only slightly raised, like someone tried to flatten it out but was unsuccessful in completely ironing it out of the material. It looks familiar to her, although she can't place why, and it takes her a moment to piece it together.

When she does, she drops the book onto the bed with a scream that she traps between her lips.

It is a nipple. A round, flattened nipple. She has been running her hands lovingly up and down a dark book bound in human skin.

She wants, suddenly, to wash her hands and to never see this book again but, as she learned days ago, whenever she gets out of bed the healer on duty comes running to see if she needs help, and so instead she just takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she has seen bodies before and maybe not panicking this time will keep more bodies from piling up. She knew it was a dark book from the start. She shouldn't be surprised, or feel quite so betrayed by it. So she swallows her fear and picks the book up off of the bed, opens it to the first page, and tries not to inhale deeply the scents of human-leather and old parchment and when she inhales anyway, she pretends the scent of parchment isn't so comforting.

The first page is blank and so is the second page save for five words written in a faded slanted script in the bottom right corner. They are so tiny that she squints and had to bring her face so close to the page that all she can smell is leather before she can read it.

for wars you cannot lose

She swallows tightly, but there is no magic in the words themselves and so she feels braver. All spells must be spoken, she knows, and so there is no harm in just reading.

She turns the page.

The third page is blank, but the fourth page is plastered with a strange jumble of Latin, Greek and Nordic runes. She knows some of the words, but has to rummage in her bag for a self-inking quill, a fresh sheet of parchment, and her Advanced Runes dictionary for the majority of them. She runs the feather across her lips as she reads. It finally feels like she's got a puzzle to solve, and the feeling is so comforting she leans into it and allows herself to be lost in the project, just the way she'd lose herself in homework while she was at school. She turns the page, jots down a translation, picks up her Runes dictionary, and continues well through the afternoon.

She stops, finally, shoving everything back into her bag and pretending to read something else when she hears the healer bustling next door with a tray. It isn't against the rules to read books in bed, and it isn't like there's anything else for her to do, but for some reason, she feels like she ought to keep the book a secret, even though her trips to and from the ministry are anything but. She tells herself that it's only because the book could be dangerous. What other reason could there be?

By the next morning, she has read the entire book, cover to cover, and she is still confused. The pages are a mess of different handwritings, like it was written by dozens of different people, in some places only writing one or two letters each. What pages aren't a mess of crimes against calligraphy are littered with diagrams she can't puzzle out—well, except for one, which looked like a series of tetragrams inside of a circle and peppered with runes with the words IN YOUR BLOOD written underneath in what Hermione is willing to bet is dried, brown blood, although the shape itself is in black ink.

From the way the words and sentences and shapes spill from one page to another, she suspects the whole book is one long spell, but she had no more of a clue what it was for than she had when she started it.

There are aspects of its wandwork and articulation that remind her of dozens of other spells she has learned over the years, but it isn't like anything she's ever seen. Naturally, she suspects it is a very complicated dark curse, so she isn't going to say it out loud or even copy down any of the sigils for reference. She wonders, briefly, if it is to make something like a horcrux, but nowhere does it call for any sacrifice beyond a bit of her own blood, so it can't be as bad as that.

Suddenly, it dawns on her that she is absolutely exhausted and she falls back against her pillows with a sigh, completely unperturbed by the papers, quills, and books spread around her like a strange and jagged quilt.

Tuesday, September 3rd. Afternoon.

She dreams of a dark shadow and, in her dream, she is reciting a spell perfectly, her mouth forming sounds she has never heard before but knows anyway.

"Miss Granger. Miss Granger."

Hermione jerks awake with a startled cry to see her main healer gently moving her parchments and books off of her bed and onto the bedside table.

"Sorry," she mumbles, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes to clear them. "Good morning."

"It's afternoon, Miss Granger," the healer says, and gives her a gentle smile.

"Oh." Then she remembers she was up all night. "Sorry," she repeats.

The healer laughs and begins to lower her blankets. Hermione, who knows that it is time to check on her injuries, is already rolling over.

"I'm just sorry I had to wake you," the healer says. "It seemed like you were having a nice dream."

Hermione, who cannot remember dreaming about anything at all, knits her brows in confusion, although it is impossible for the healer to see the expression now that Hermione is laying on her stomach. So Hermione vocalizes her confusion with, "what makes you say that?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Where did you learn Greek? Your pronunciation is excellent."

She doesn't know how to answer because she doesn't know Greek, apart from what she learned when she was at Hogwarts, but it doesn't matter because the healer clicks her tongue and lifts Hermione's robe further up along her spine. The air is cold and she can feel goosepimples rising along the ridge of her exposed backbone and down the lengths of her legs.

"How does this feel Miss Granger?"

There are cool fingers pressed across the top of her back. "It twinges a bit," she says, "but it's really fine, actually." She turns her head, but all she can see is the lifted edge of her robe hanging between her vision and the rest of her body.

"It looks fine, too."

Hermione takes a moment to absorb this information. "What do you mean?" She is too smart to believe that she is SUDDENLY BETTER because even magic isn't good enough for curses like the one she took.

"I'll need to get Healer MacAulay in here to look at this."

Thursday, September 5th. Evening.

Hermione is released two days later, and she is feeling better than she has felt in months, even though she still isn't sleeping well. It's like there is a fire in her that she hasn't known since this all started, or even before that, if she thinks about it.

She raises her chin like a queen as she walks out of St. Mungo's sandwiched between four aurors she doesn't know and one she doesn't recognize but knows has to be Harry in Polyjuice potion. The flashing of cameras, journalists vying for the EXCLUSIVE STORY! from Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's brilliant (to quote the lying quill of Rita Skeeter) "On and Off Love Interest." Three days ago, this might have overwhelmed her, but now it doesn't even feel like a challenge.

Today, her bones must be made of steel. She could eat the whole world raw right now. Her hands, she is sure, could snap lightning at any minute. She might live forever in a glory like this. She might never have been alive before this at all. She stares ownership into the cameras and she is not afraid. Not of the flashing lights. Not of what the papers will write. Not of Death Eaters. Not of anything.

Monday, September 9th. Evening.

The next three books she reads, while Mrs. Weasley stuffs her with food and love and welcome comfort, aren't nearly as interesting as the first one was. One is about a ghastly dark wizard in the sixteenth century who mastered the art of turning people inside out before eventually turning his wand on himself, proving that one can indeed turn oneself inside out. The spell ostensibly died with the wizard (and certainly wasn't recorded in this particular tome), which Hermione doesn't see as any real loss. The next book is just a litany of Malfoys through the ages and after three chapters of "...and Cassius and Persephone Malfoy begot Abraxes Malfoy on the First of October in the year…" it takes all of her willpower not to chuck it into the fireplace.

The last book is a potions book, and she finds several potentially useful potions she copied down onto separate parchment and passed to Kingsley, who makes time in his busy schedule to attend the "Hermione is Out of Mungo's" banquet that Molly Weasley has prepared.

"This is good work, Hermione," he says, shuffling the pages in his hands. They are in one of the upstairs bedrooms, away from the sounds of the party. "Impressive."

"Thank you, sir," she replies, holding her head a little bit higher. There. She is worth it. She is helping. It doesn't matter that she isn't fighting. She is making her mark. She is helping the cause.

"Hermione, are you in here?" Ron opens the door without knocking but has the decency to look sheepishly between Hermione and the Minister of Magic once he realizes that he is intruding. "Sorry," he mumbles, his ears turning red. "Should I go?"

"No, Ron." The parchment, Hermione realizes, has already been slipped out of sight and Kingsley runs a tired hand over his face. "Congratulations again on your recovery, Hermione." He claps her on the shoulder. "I should be getting back to work. I only dropped in to see how you were doing."

She lets out a long breath through her nose as Kingsley pushes past Ron, who waits for her in the doorway, still looking apprehensive. She and Ron trump down the stairs shoulder-to-shoulder, but not quite touching, and not speaking at all. They are nothing more that friends now, and that is as much her doing as it is his. The "relationship," if it could even be called that, consisted of a string of awkward kisses and even more awkward silences. There's a soft insecurity to Ron that she can love as a friend but can't stand as a lover. They function best as friends. She is not bitter and she doesn't think he is, either, but it's only been a month and a half since they agreed to go back to "just friends" and neither is sure where to draw the lines anymore. This is what happens, she supposes, when you spend two years half in love with your best friend only to realize that half in love is nowhere near close enough to fully in love. It felt too much like trying to kiss a brother.

When they reach the party, Hermione walks gratefully toward Ginny while Ron, heading in the opposite direction, takes shelter with Harry and the twins.

After the party, Ron floos with her to Grimmauld place and brings her trunk up to her room while she lets Crookshanks out of his carrier and then sits heavily in an armchair by the fireplace. Harry didn't come with them, and Ron doesn't seem to want to spend too much time in awkward silence with her, and so he excuses himself.

She curls in her chair with a book and before long, Crookshanks hops into her lap to function as a warm weight wedged against her side. She is reading one of her new books, but her mind is wandering like a dog that always goes back to where its family used to live.

It probably isn't healthy to think about a single spell so much, but she can't seem to stop herself. She dreams about it every night and lingers on it during daylight hours. This is, of course, only because it was such a disturbing thing to read, and now it sits like a bitter secret in her mouth, waiting to come out. But it isn't a secret; at least not one that she keeps on purpose—she has tried, at least once a day since she got out of St. Mungo's to tell Harry or even Ron about it, but whenever she brings it up, something urgent and pressing happens or someone calls or something bangs loudly in the other room and there never seems to be a chance to get the words out.

Tuesday, September 10th. Evening.

Harry comes back bleeding and slumps at the kitchen table.

"It's nothing, Hermione," he calls, cleaning blood off of his glasses, as she races around the kitchen for dittany, dittany it was just here, where did it go? "I'm really fine. Really."

But she doesn't listen. She holds his head back and droppers the foul-smelling potion into the gash across his forehead and thanks whatever god or gods there might be that it is working. When she is done, the only scar on his face is the one that has always been there; the one that has marked him like a holy thumbprint for this war. She would erase that one, too, if she could.

"What happened?" she asks when she has cleared all the blood from the fireplace and door knobs and scrubbed wooden table.

"Malfoy."

The surprise must show on her face because Harry amends, "Lucius Malfoy."

Of course it was Lucius. Hermione was a fool to even wonder. Draco Malfoy hasn't been seen for over a month; not since he helped Luna Lovegood and Hannah Abbott escape from the dungeons at Malfoy Manor in August. Not, of course, that it did much good. Dolohov had caught up to them before they even reached the woods at the edge of the estate, but Hannah managed to get to the apparition point and back to a safe house. She choked out the story of the would-be escape around blood before dying in Hermione's shaking arms. In retrospect, Hermione isn't too surprised by the result, even though admitting it makes her skin crawl and her mouth taste bitter. Luna and Hannah were never made for war. Malfoy's actions, on the other hand, surprised her at the time and still surprise her now. She imagines he was made of mercury. He slipped through the nails when she had him pinned for dissection; not liquid or solid, but certainly dangerous. But he is probably dead now, so it doesn't matter that she never figured him out.

"He sent a sectumsempra at me. I blocked it, mostly." Harry grins sheepishly and ducks his head a bit. In the month since Draco disappeared, Lucius has become one of the most ruthless fighters.

Hermione wrinkles her nose, "You need to be quicker with that, Harry. Mostly is still too close," she chides, even though they both know that she has no room to talk, given her track record.

Maybe this, though, is why he doesn't argue with her. He ducks his head again and runs his fingers through his hair.

"Yeah," he says, "I know."

Tuesday, September 17th. Afternoon.

Hermione sits in one place and chews her nails to the fingertips whenever Harry leaves the house.

Every time he goes out, she is positive that this will be the last time she will see him, and it kills her to watch the front door close and to not be able to follow. As long as she has known Harry James Potter, she has followed him into danger. If she goes, she will be worse than useless. She refuses to be just another fear distracting him in a fight.

To keep from going insane, she takes trips to and from the Ministry to get new books to read and then she reads the books. In the last week, she has read more books about dark curses than were probably even in the library at Hogwarts. She has learned quite a lot and some of it has already proved to be useful. She is the smartest witch of her age, and her work reflects this.

Hermione Granger is cleverness and books, but she is also bravery and friendship—at least she likes to think that she is —and she is sure that she is going mad waiting for Harry to come home. Every time he leaves, she knows that today is the last day and it will be Kingsley or McGonagall who will come back with a pale face and wide, sad eyes. She should get a medal for sitting in this old, angry house for a whole week. The spell from that book is a song stuck in her head, and this is part of the reason she thinks she is going crazy. Maybe she should try telling Harry about this again when he comes back.

What she actually says to Harry when he slumps through the front door and flops onto the couch opposite her chair, boots and all, is: "I'm reading a very compelling book right now."

The book she is talking about is currently in her lap, closed around her finger to mark the page and to keep Harry from noticing that she's got a band-aid over her fingertip where she chewed it down too far.

"Oh yeah?" he answers mechanically, "That's great, Hermione." Mud flakes off the tip of his boot and onto the carpet. Kreacher will have a fit when he gets back from Bill and Fleur's, where Harry has asked him to help the young couple settle in.

She raises her eyebrows. His eyes are closed. "It's about Flobberworms."

"Fascinating."

"And blast-ended-skrewt mating patterns."

"Wow."

"It gets very graphic."

"That's great, Hermione."

"And then Kingsley stopped by."

"Fascinating."

"He proposed."

"Wow."

"I joined a quidditch team today. I'm now the keeper for the Hollyhead Harpies."

Harry opens his eyes and looks at her. "You were reading about the Harpies? Why?"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, Harry, just go to bed if you're too tired to talk to me."

"Sorry," he rubs his eyes and when he pulls his hands away from his face, his glasses are crooked. "It's just been a long day."

She stands and Crookshanks jumps nimbly to the floor and pads out of the room. "Come on," she sighs, depositing her book on the chair and walking over to where Harry is still slumped. She straightens his glasses in a gesture that is so familiar she doesn't even notice she is doing it. "I'll make us some tea and you can tell me all about what happened."

Thursday, September 19th. Night.

It takes until Friday for her to finally snap and sneak out to a battle. Like most little wars fought in shadows and side streets, this fight was not planned and she only learns about it when Bill sends a patronus for Harry, asking for backup. She might not have apparated at all if Harry had been there, but he was out hunting horcruxes with Ron (something else she isn't allowed to do anymore, never mind that she knows more about camping than either of them), following a lead cobbled together from pilfered Death Eater memories and that strange connection Harry has with Voldemort.

She couldn't let a battle be lost because the boys were off doing something else and Harry would never forgive himself if people died and he wasn't there, so Hermione goes instead. She turns on the spot and then she is in Godric's Hollow, whirling sideways as a firework of yellow light shoots past her ear close enough that she can smell her hair burning.

Her heart hammers like a war drum in her chest and she is not afraid. She was born for war and while still turning, she fires a stupefy in the direction the crucio came from, but there is something wicked railing in her brain. Why isn't she using harsher magic? There is a curse on her tongue that she knows will turn the war in her favor. It's right there on the back of her mouth like a fat toad, ready to leave. The other side will not hesitate to use unforgivables so why shouldn't she? And she has something even better than anything they might know.

But no—she is not like the Death Eaters. She is Hermione Granger, and wherever that thick line has been drawn between good and evil, she is firmly on one side and they are on the other. She does not use unforgivable curses because she is not a murderer or an unforgivable person. War is not a means to prove herself a wicked beast. She knows already what kind of monsters war creates and she will not be a casualty in a moral or physical sense. She will survive and she will do it with her hands clean. And she isn't stupid enough to test out a spell she doesn't understand in a situation like this.

They win the battle and she only knows when she finds herself, panting for breath, caked in sweat and dust from shattered sidewalks, surrounded by cloaked figures all bearing the lightning-blue phoenix on the right shoulder like a little neon "DONT CURSE ME" sign. She has never been left after a battle before and so this is her first real victory. She doesn't know what she was expecting—a whooping cheer, maybe, like after a quidditch match—but all that happens is Bill gives her a shallow nod and the six or so who haven't already left for home or been portkeyed to St. Mungo's all approach the dark bodies on the ground, looking for signs of life while Robards and Dawlish keep their wands trained on the shadows.

"Let's get moving," growls Dawlish, "They're already dead, but the Death Eaters might return with backup any second."

"We don't know that they're all dead, sir," says a woman with short dark hair that Hermione hasn't seen before as the two of them turn a body over, but Dawlish either doesn't hear her or pretends not to.

The robed figure Hermione bends over is the first dead body Hermione has touched since she closed Hannah's eyes in the kitchen of the safe house and she tries not to think about the iron tang of blood that smothered her then and is smothering her now.

"He's still alive!" The woman calls, raising wide eyes and looking desperately around, "Gawain! Dawlish! He's alive!"

"Then stop shouting and get him to the hospital, Bulstrode! What are you waiting for—a personalized invitation?" Dawlish's eyes roll toward her but his wand remains trained on the space between two dark and broken buildings. There is a vein bulging in his neck and spit flies when he speaks.

Gawain Robards gives her a nod of dismissal. The girl bites her lip and disapparates with a crack like a whip. Hermione stands, wipes the blood from her hands onto the thighs of her jeans, and moves to the next body.

There are seven more bodies to check. One is a Death Eater who gets ennervated, stunned again, and taken to Azkaban by Dawlish. This surprises Hermione. She'd never thought before about what they would do with the Death Eaters who are left behind after a battle, but it only makes sense, really, to go directly to prison. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Another Death Eater is taken to St. Mungo's. She recognizes him as Stan Shunpike, and he goes with a two-auror escort and no wand. Another order member is taken to St. Mungo's shortly thereafter. Hermione recognizes him, too. She met him once in a safe house in Scotland and she remembers him ruddy-faced with a big laugh. He is now bleeding fiercely from a gash that takes up most of his left side and he is a light shade of blue, but still, miraculously, breathing. The other four are all corpses. Two Death Eaters Hermione doesn't really look at, Dedalus Diggle whose wrinkled face is frozen in a gash of pain or horror Hermione tries not to stare at for too long, and one body that is burned too badly to be identified as definitively human, let alone a known person, without the help of a good healer or coroner. Robards goes by portkey with all four bodies to the coroner's office of St. Mungo's. "I'll let them sort us out," he says before he leaves.

It is strange to think that Robards just had a portkey to a coroner on him, waiting to be activated, and Hermione wonders if he carries portkeys like that wherever he goes. She wonders how many bodies he's brought there himself.

"Thanks," Bill says, and suddenly Hermione realizes that they are the only two left, which is probably why no one is yelling for them to take cover or get out of there.

"No problem," she answers and is proud of how light the words sound. It is perfectly dark (if anyone is home, they are not turning on lights) and so she doubts Bill can see how bad her hair is or that she is already crying.

"You were the one who stunned Rowle, yeah?" he asks. He is half-a-house away from her, so she doesn't know what he looks like, but he sounds tired. His voice is all gravel from shouting spells for twenty minutes.

Still, she is startled. "Yes. How did you know?"

"You were the only one here tonight who still casts stunners. Anyway, good work. Best get home now, yeah? Dawlish was right; I don't know why they haven't come back yet."

Saturday, September 21st. Night.

There is a battle on Sunday and this time Harry and Hermione are asked for together. Pride lifts her bones and she holds her nose in the air all through the short argument she and Harry have over her attendance.

"You're not going, Hermione!" he hisses and there is power in his words, but she is not scared of him.

Instead, she draws herself up to her full height and jabs a finger into Harry's sternum. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, Harry James Potter. This is my war as much as it is yours and I will let you do all the fighting while I just sit around, reading books all day."

"But reading is useful," he tries, shoving her finger away, but it is back in an instant.

"They. Called. Me. Too. Harry," she huffs, jamming her finger into his chest to punctuate every word. "It's not just for you."

He gives her a look that says he is contemplating tying her to a chair before he leaves.

"Don't try to do this alone, Harry," she tries instead, knitting her eyebrows, "Until the very end, right?"

They hold hands and Harry apparates them both. He is better at apparating to a fight than she is. Instead of sending them into the heart of battle, he takes them just past the edge of the fighting. They can hear the boom and crash of spells snapping across trees but they cannot yet see the glow of the crossfire. It is suddenly just like last year at Hogwarts and all she can smell is pine and magic but she is not afraid now like she was then. There is a curse pounding in her head as she reminds herself of Bill's words from Friday, but she is sure that Harry will never let her out of his sight again if she curses anyone seriously and her track record isn't so good that she's willing to gamble with people's lives, so when Henry says "Together?" and they start running towards the fray, she has a stunning spell on her tongue, and not something worse. She will always wonder if this was the right decision.

It is immediately obvious that this is a different kind of fight. There are more spells than she has seen fired in one place since school. The colors burn trails across her retinas and although she knows that it would be smart to be afraid, the spell on her tongue makes her braver than she should be. Miraculously, the curses always seem to just miss her and her stunners always find their mark. Because she is so busy succeeding, she doesn't realize that they are losing until someone behind her calls "Go back! Get to the apparition points!" and someone to her left screams.

She turns her head just in time to see red hair disappear under a terrific beast made entirely out of green fire and she is running towards the fire-beast without even thinking about it- eight names fumbling against her brain and she is running without looking where she is going and she is running without anything in her mind besides I have to help Ihavetohelp Ihavetohelphelphelp and then she is yanked backwards with such force that she can feel the hairs tearing from her scalp in handfuls before she even hears herself scream, but there is a hand around her throat and a wand in her back and she is clawing and she is biting and there is a pull behind her navel and she screams Harry's name over and over again but it is cold and it is empty and she is alone and everything is so dark that it takes her breath away and, at last, she knows what fear is.