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“Swallow your grief,” Kingsley barks, another hex flying from his wand. “We have no time for it now.”
The words echo around her mind, words she knows, words she’s lived, but that no longer make sense.
When Harry had been wrong about the wandlore and the Elder Wand struck him down, she’d allowed herself just one sharp intake of breath but then she was moving.
And she had not allowed herself to stop.
Not when Ron sacrificed himself for Ginny.
Not when Ginny still died only a month later.
Not when her parents were tortured for the existence of a daughter they did not remember.
Not when a strange sickness eliminated half of her safe house.
Nor when those that remained were killed in a trap she just barely evaded.
Not by skill. By sheer dumb luck.
She now walks with a limp she is certain is caused by the weight of her guilt, of her grief.
But still she walked.
And she fought.
Burying the pain somewhere deep where it festered. Where it carved her out until she was little more than a shell of a person.
That was how he found her seven months after Harry died.
Severus Snape, alive by the power of precautionary antivenin and sheer will. He hobbled into the makeshift potion’s lab that she’d established, neck still heavily bandaged, and took charge of the space. Hermione had grown used to responding to commands like a machine.
This was not that.
He did not tell her that she shouldn’t add powdered moonstone. He said, ‘Do you want them to heal or not? Choose a better base.’ He made her think which, she realized then, was something she had stopped doing. Everything since Harry had died had been instinct or orders.
Severus made her think again and in doing so he brought her back to herself. Or at least, a version of herself, tattered by war but still recognizable. He showed her that moving and processing were not mutually exclusive. Eventually the numbness abated but a cold lingered until the day one reached for the other and she remembered what it felt like to be warm.
Survival became a desire to live.
She fights not because the alternative is death but for the hope of a future.
With him.
Severus.
The man who now lays in a puddle of pooling blood at her feet while the world rends itself apart around them.
Her body continues to dodge and parry incoming attacks while her mind whirls, cogs spinning uselessly for a moment but then they catch. Bury the grief. Can she do that? Can she take everything she felt for the man who had brought her back to life and bury it? Can she keep going without a hope for the future?
She can. She has. She will not.
Hermione takes a deep breath, a strange peace enveloping her as the grief abates with the promise of reunion. Knowing she would have to live with what she’d done when the dust settled had reined in her darker impulses throughout the war; As she comes back into her body now, wand slashing violently through the air, her enemy’s blood washes away the line drawn in the sand. Some might call it vengeance. She considers it a parting gift.
Blood soaks through her denims as she kneels beside Severus. She presses her wand into the earth, visualizing that which she cannot see. Kingsley’s reprimand cuts off when the ground shakes and the geyser erupts. Ground water pooled by summoning charms and forced through the earth’s surface.
It is a distraction.
In the same second where everyone instinctively turns, Hermione rises, swirling her wand in tight circles. Those that notice her movement construct barriers to deflect an aerial attack. Confusion crosses their faces, followed quickly by fear as their free hands move instinctively to their throats. Wands flail uselessly. The bodies begin to hit the ground.
It had been an ambush, ten of them set upon by thirty. The bulk of the enemy had been focused on Severus which had likely spared most of their side from immediate slaughter. Having already accepted that she will die today, she does not bother with shield charms as she slowly crosses the clearing. Their enemies drop in her wake. Her allies stagger back in alarm, then turn to watch her with the reverent fear one gives an angel of death. They probably assume she’s using dark magic. Why would they assume otherwise? Magic renders Muggle science virtually useless after all.
While Muggles needed to break the world down into its bits to know how it worked and how they might work with it, wizards needed only to see a problem and will a solution into being. Their reliance on magic—on their pureblood, generations old, superior to her magic—is their downfall. Those who believed her inferior because of her blood are falling where they stand because they do not know that the air around them is comprised of gases that work in delicate harmony. A harmony which she disrupts with each twirl of her wand.
They do not understand the problem. They cannot will a solution. And it all ends far quicker than anyone might expect.
Hermione looks at the corpses surrounding her, vaguely surprised and disappointed that she’s not among them. She waits for guilt to hit her, the thought of war conventions entering and leaving her mind in the same moment. Though their deaths were relatively quick, they had not been painless. Once upon a time she might have called them cruel.
She blinks. They had taken Severus’ breath. Now she has taken theirs. That was fair, wasn’t it? All was fair in love and war. Except for the fact she still lived, of course.
When she turns back towards Severus, her allies take a step back. Her lips twist in a wry smile. It was something they had talked about once, about how many were content to benefit from dirty hands so long as they didn’t have to see them. No one had moved to stop her. No one would look at her now.
“Hermione—"
“Just let me be with him,” she says quietly. “Just for a moment.”
Bone deep weariness descends upon her but she makes herself walk on. One last time. One foot in front of the other until she’s next to him. She lays down on the ground beside him, ignoring the still warm blood as she curls into him the way she has so many times before. Hermione places her hand against his ribs. Her breath hitches.
“Severus?” She sits up, casting a lumos as she lifts an eyelid. His pupils dilate. “Severus!”
“Is he—”
Hermione grabs Severus and pulls him into nothingness, re-emerging in one of his safe houses. She summons healing potions and conjures a cot. For hours she moves at a sprint, racing death itself to claim him. When she finally collapses onto the chair beside him, his pulse is weak but steady. His breath is shallow but present.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, closing her eyes and cradling one of his hands in hers. “We should have gone when you asked me to. Wake up and I’ll go wherever you want. I promise.” She presses her lips to his knuckles. “I promise.”