Something that I find curious is that few authors that I have read account for the psychological stress and turmoil involved in war; even JRK takes her epilogue nearly two decades from the end of the war. She has left a lot to our imaginations about how these characters come to terms with their losses and their actions, and how they were able to resume what we can only assume is a 'normal' life – marriage, children, the next generation of Hogwarts students. How did they get there? The portrayals of these characters will not be sunshine and daisies, simply because I feel it is highly unrealistic that they maintain childish innocence and enthusiasm when they must fight, take lives, and suffer losses in this war.

I am not forcing you to read this, nor am I asking that you agree with my opinion or the viewpoints expressed in…whatever this might become. I do, however, look forward to your own opinions, and hope that you will share them with me. Additionally, I won't promise a strict update schedule because my own is highly volatile at the moment. I apologize if this does not suit you, and invite you to wait a few weeks and read several chapters at one time. If this is familiar to you, you aren't crazy :) Life interfered, and I took an unintentional year-long hiatus, and I cannot remember the login to my original account. That being said, I have done a LOT of editing to the original material. I think it flows better now, explains more, and leaves fewer holes.

I have an outline, and I know where I want this to end, but I've never done this before. This is going to be a monstrosity and I'm half-terrified. I'm bending canon to my will, taking pieces and making someone else's world my own. That being said, anything you recognize surely isn't mine; I'm sitting in JKR's sandbox, and I promise to return the toys that I play with.

Love always,
Threnody.

Introduction

Some girls talk about losing their virginity the way they talk about the weather. Hermione Granger lost quills and her temper, and earrings when she bothered to wear them. She didn't lose her virginity. She fucking threw it. She "lost" her innocence when she took a man's life, and she'd be damned if she "lost" her virginity, too.

She didn't know his name; it didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter now. He had Apparated into Headquarters immediately following their – her – battle with a soldier's stride, and spoken to Kingsley behind closed doors. From a hushed conversations and the way that he moaned beneath her, she thought he might have been American. He wasn't much taller than she was, but he was lean and his body was hard, and when she pushed him against the wall, he didn't mind that a murderer's hands pressed against his trachea made it hard to breathe. He didn't mind that blood was caking under her fingernails and that as it dried, it crumbled against his skin. Mud knotted her hair and something between hate and anguish hazed her eyes. She was feral that night, and when he woke, the only evidence of her existence was what she left behind: bruises on his throat, welts on his back, and something inhuman that came from her throat and still rang in his ears.