Chapter Forty

A/N: The last of DH, my friends. At last. Everything you recognize, and all fully italicized text, belongs to JKR. My heartfelt thanks to Shellsnapeluver, OpalJade and Lulabelle72, whose input got me through the harrowing journey of this chapter.

There was a humming in her ears. Nothing else. Her eyes swept over the small, dirty room in which she stood; they lit briefly on the peeling wallpaper; on the thick film of dust on the floor, mingled in places with dark, drying blood; on the crate that lay upended by the entrance to the tunnel; but truly, she saw nothing. There was nothing inside her.

She did not cry. It seemed that all her emotions were trapped--shut forever beneath the wall she had erected in her mind as Snape had died. Her head felt heavy, her movements slow and stupid. She thought she might like to sleep.

She turned and looked out of the window-wall. Hogwarts still burned like a giant's funeral pyre, but no rage, no sorrow touched her. I will have to go back there, she thought.

Slowly, she took one step and then another. She braced herself as she crossed the center of the room, sure that once her feet made contact with Snape's blood that the dam would burst inside her, but nothing happened. It was just a floor. Just shoe leather. Walking is nothing but controlled falling, her mind offered nonsensically. Where had she read that?

She edged through the opening into the passageway and descended the stairs, listening to the sound of her heels slapping against the stone. She had to duck slightly as she proceeded through the tunnel, and she watched the ground as it passed beneath her. When she reached the end, she absently levitated a branch to quiet the Willow and crawled through the hole to the strangely silent grounds of Hogwarts. Everyone must be inside, she thought. Then, Dispose of your dead with dignity.

The castle loomed before her, and she felt the first stirrings of something, some unnamed emotion in her, as she registered, for what felt like the first time, the damage to the building that had felt timeless and indestructible. Part of the west wing had been blown apart, and she walked toward the ruins automatically, skirting the fires, picking her way around the chunks of stone that littered the grass. When she reached the opening, she pressed her hand against the outer wall, almost as if she were feeling for a pulse, or verifying that what she saw was real. Hogwarts, hurt. Hogwarts, violated.

She could not bear to climb into the castle as the Death Eaters had done, and so she turned and walked from that place, following the walls of the castle until she reached the entrance to the Main Hall. The door was still locked firmly, and she tried several charms with her wand, trying to gain entrance properly. It seemed very necessary to her that things be done properly.

But finally, she had to accept that the door would not admit her. She walked to the window through which she had made her escape and cleared the remaining glass from it with her wand. Gingerly, she stepped over the sill and into Hogwarts.

She could hear the low murmur of voices, muffled cries of distress and pain, plans being laid, shouts of relief as family members found each other. She lingered at the door of the Great Hall, watching. She did not want to step inside; she did not want anyone to see her. This place... it felt... too much. Too bright with feeling. People would talk to her; they would touch her, and that seemed abhorrent and wrong. She did not want to speak or to touch. She did not want any of this--any of it. A man she did not know stepped aside, and she saw Lupin laying on the ground--Lupin! Lupin, whose tiny son had only just been born; Lupin, who had had no chance to imagine a world in which he might not be hated, but who had fought for one, all the same. Lupin, dead? If Lupin was dead then anyone could be dead. Anyone at all. There was no order to this, no reasoning. How could she be alive if Lupin were dead?

She saw the Weasleys, a clutch of ginger heads, all bent over something that she could not see. She saw Ginny double over as if struck, saw Ron pull her into his arms. She looked from face to face. Who was missing? Arthur, Molly, George, Ginny, Ron, Percy, Charlie, Fleur and Bill... for a moment, she could not think of it; it danced outside the edges of her mind. What had happened to cause Mr Weasley's face to look like that? Human faces were not made to look like that. Was it Harry? Where was--

Her head rolled back on her neck, and she sank against the wall, feeling her knees give beneath her. Fred. It was fucking Fred Weasley, and here were the tears that had hidden from her; here was the pain that threatened to tear her in two. And for the first time, Hermione knew that no matter what she had said, no matter what she had thought she believed, she had never really imagined that any of them would die. How could they die when they were right? How could people die when she knew them? And she saw, suddenly, that she should never have been trusted with the Vita Secundus, for if she had some now she would surely give it to Fred, anything, anything to make Mr Weasley's face stop looking like that, anything to be able to stop imagining what George would look like when he rose up without his twin beside him for the first time.

No one heard the scream that tore through her because it did not escape. It was too big to escape, and instead, it rebounded inside her until she thought it would burst her wide open. She shut her eyes against the people in the room, the people whose faces had, only an hour before, filled her with strength and purpose. Everything was lost. Everything.

If time had passed, she did not know how much. Ron's hands found hers, and her eyes snapped open to stare into his blue ones. They were red-rimmed and puffy, but filled with the determination that she had lost. It hurt to look at them, to see the hope there still. Your brother is dead, she wanted to shout at him. Why are you looking at me that way?

"Hermione, Harry's just gone through. He thinks I didn't see him; he thinks he's going alone. Come on."

He pulled her to her feet and thrust the sword of Gryffindor into her hands. He seemed to choke for a moment, to sputter, and then he said, "Idiot went without this."

She followed him blindly back out of the castle and onto the lawn. How many endless marches would she make across these grounds tonight? How much would she be forced to witness?

"Ron," she said. She wanted to tell him about the Vita, to tell him that there had been a chance, but that now there was none, that they were following Harry to his death, but she could not make herself speak the words.

"He has the mastery, Hermione," Ron said, seeming to sense her thoughts, "and he knows what he's doing. He knows that--"

"Did he see? Did he see in there? Lupin, Colin, Padma, your fucking brother, Ronald?"

"Yeah, he saw. He saw on his way to the Headmaster's office. He knows, Hermione. Come on."

The Headmaster's office. She gripped Ron's arm. "He's going to give himself up," she whispered. "The Pensieve silver... Ron, Dumbledore told Snape, he made him promise to tell Harry--" Her face crumpled. "Harry's a Horcrux. The scar is a Horcrux. Dumbledore told Snape that Harry would have to sacrifice himself, that he would have to--" Her voice rose in pitch, hysterical, until it broke off, and she could go no further.

Ron stood there looking at her in the moonlight. "That's why he went alone."

She said nothing. Ron opened his mouth, and she expected him to demand angrily how long she had known, why she hadn't told them.

"We have to get the others."

"What?"

"I'm not going to let him die alone, Hermione. We have to get the others. If the wand doesn't work--" Ron paused. "If the wand doesn't work, I want the last thing that he sees--"

Hermione turned away. Ron's face was contorted, vicious with grief, and she could not look at it.

"I want him to know that we finished it. That we finished the job."

She nodded, mute, and Ron sprinted across the grounds toward the castle. In moments, the front door burst open at last, and those who remained inside Hogwarts spilled forth. Ron ran ahead of them with Ginny just behind him, and in her face, Hermione saw a terrible purpose, and she knew for just a fraction of a second that that was what she must have looked like as she charged the Dementors, as she ran for her husband.

As the others approached--Kingsley, Tonks, Molly Weasley, Blaise and Neville and Luna and Flitwick, Charlie, Dean, Seamus and Dedalus Diggle, Sturgis Podmore, and Oliver Wood... as they charged the Forbidden Forest, Hermione turned and ran in herself. She did not stop to wonder how she would find Harry, but pushed ahead, slashing a path through the underbrush with the sword in her hand.

The forest was alive with voices; it was difficult to orient herself, to feel as if she were pursuing anything. But the centaurs charged past with their bows drawn, and Hermione followed them instinctively. If there was something foreign in this forest, the centaurs would know where. They ran past the den where the Acromantulas lived, past Grawp's hideout--and then the herd drew up suddenly outside a clearing, and Hermione skidded to a halt behind them. The others pressed in beside her, and she could smell fear and sweat and blood in the darkness; she could hear screams of fury and terror, Hagrid's booming war-cry--and above them all, Harry's voice.

"Stay back! All of you, stay back!"

"No," Voldemort said, and his voice did not so much rise over the din, but cut right through it. "Let them come. Let them see, Harry Potter. Let them watch their hero die at my hands."

Ron pushed past the centaurs and into the circle where the Death Eaters stood robed and masked, and Hermione followed him, the sword held aloft, but Voldemort passed them seemingly without interest. He scanned the restless, frightened crowd with his eyes until he located his target. Then he raised his left hand and twitched his fingers in a summoning gesture. Professor Trelawney moved toward him as if she were being pulled along invisible tracks; her face was pale and flinching.

"You," Voldemort said.

She shook her head in a kind of horrified denial.

"Yes, you. Tell me, Professor. Is this the boy you predicted could defeat me?" He swept his arm back in a flourish, indicating Harry who stood tall and terrified in the center of the clearing. His face burned with a sick kind of resignation tinged with fury.

"I cannot hear you," Voldemort said, and Hermione turned back to the drama that the Dark Lord was enacting. "I said, is this the boy you predicted would defeat me?"

Professor Trelawney did not speak. Her lips were pressed into a thin, white line, and she quaked where she stood. Hermione wondered briefly if the professor had known whom she had meant when she made the prophecy, if she, in fact, remembered making it at all.

Voldemort flicked his wand impatiently, and Professor Trelawney reeled backward. "Lord Voldemort grows weary of your games," he said. "Answer me."

Behind her glasses, Trelawney's eyes grew even wider than usual, but her mouth stayed firmly shut. Her right hand rose and rubbed at her chest, as if to cover a place where she had been struck.

"Answer me," Voldemort boomed, but still, the old woman said nothing. Tears coursed down her cheeks, but her lips remained closed.

"Ha," Voldemort exhaled angrily. "It matters not. You were protected all these years by Dumbledore, Sybill Trelawney. Lord Voldemort has waited a very long time to kill you. I wonder what it must have been like to live in my castle this year, Professor, knowing that at any moment, I could come for you. But then, of course," the Dark Lord chuckled mirthlessly, "I am forgetting your vaunted abilities. I suppose you 'knew' this day was coming. Avada Kedavra."

Professor Trelawney crumpled to the ground as the blast of green light hit her. It seemed to have been what the crowd on both sides of the Dark Lord had been waiting for. Those who had stood silent and spellbound as Voldemort had spoken suddenly surged forward, and duels sprung up around Hermione the likes of which she had never seen. Death was in the air, and shots of green light danced all around her. Hermione fought with the sword in one hand and her wand clutched tightly in the other. She parried and struck at a slim, cloaked Death Eater whose spells seemed to shoot without ceasing from her wand, singeing the ground before Hermione as she leaped and danced away from them.

They fought silently, bitterly. Hermione's Burning Curse connected with the woman's left shoulder, and she hissed and fell back. Hermione whirled in place, surveying the battle. She was jostled to one side by Ginny, who was backing up in huge, powerful strides as she dueled Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix was overtaking her, and Hermione prepared to shoot her from the side when the mad witch toppled suddenly to the ground, hit by a flash of light from a source Hermione could not see.

"Gah!" Ginny's tone was frightening, almost bloodthirsty. "I'll finish the next one myself, thank you!" she cried and turned to help Luna, who was fighting Fenrir Greyback. Luna's wand twirled beautifully in her hands, sending out showers of brilliant blue sparks that seemed to sting and confuse him, and he stopped fighting for a moment to paw at them. Ginny took the opportunity to hit him squarely in the chest with a Stunner so intense that Hermione was fairly certain that she had killed him.

"For Bill, you sick fuck," Ginny screamed, and Hermione knew then that they had reached the end, that even those she knew best would shoot to kill.

All the manners of war had fallen away, and Hermione felt no regret about Stunning Dolohov from behind as he approached Ron, and she stepped hard on his face, which stared unseeing at the sky, feeling his nose crunch beneath her heel as she moved to take on Travers. But Ron barreled in front of her, knocking her off balance, and she was barely able to swing the sword out of the way before she landed on it. The wind whoofed out of her as her chest hit the ground, and she watched with horrified fascination as Ron pursued Draco Malfoy into the writhing crowd. But her attention was diverted by a sight that made her blood seem to stand still in her veins. Voldemort, who had stood untouched, surrounded by a Shield that was seemingly impenetrable, was releasing Nagini from her sphere. The snake slid, almost undetectable, over the cool, leafy ground, and though Hermione could not hear him over the noise of the battle, she felt certain that he had just chosen his weapon, that he spoke to the snake in parseltongue, that the words were the same as those he had spoken with Snape in the shack.

She did not leap to her feet, but rose silently, smoothly. She stepped quietly through the leaves, moving parallel to the enormous snake as it wound between the pairs of duelers. Harry was locked in combat with Rastaban Lestrange, who was trying desperately to Incarcerate him, and around them on the ground lay the remnants of dozens of magical ropes, looking like snakes themselves. Nagini crept soundlessly toward Harry, and Hermione did the same, circling the pair until she had a clear shot at the snake. She could not fail. She had given up the potion, Harry's potion, and now his life was hers to guard, hers to protect. She would not let the snake strike twice.

As Nagini began to rear, spreading her giant hood, Hermione blasted Harry to the ground. She raised the sword of Gryffindor over her right shoulder as if it were a bat and dropped her wand, taking the hilt firmly in both hands. She swung the sword with every ounce of her strength, connecting with the snake's head with such force that she staggered backward as it was sliced cleanly from its body, spiraling up through the air and landing at her feet. She plunged the sword through the head, spearing it to the ground and looked up, lightheaded with adrenaline, to see Harry climbing back to his feet.

He looked at her wide-eyed for a moment as he handed her her wand and then he turned, and both of their gazes instantly focused on the Dark Lord.

Voldemort glided toward them, and those who dueled around him stepped out of his way as though they were all performing an intricately choreographed dance. Harry raised his wand.

***

Snape stood Disillusioned, frozen in place, his wand hand dropped to his side. He had left the Shrieking Shack with no real idea of where he was going, but had arrived immediately in the Forbidden Forest, drawn it seemed, as always, by the Dark Lord's call. Potter had passed by him, so close he could have reached out and touched the boy, and for a moment, he'd had the urge to do so, to assure himself that, as yet, he was alive, that there might still be some chance. Potter's skin was pale, his mother's eyes rimmed in dark, bruised shockflesh. And yet, James' heavy jaw was set determinedly in his face, and he walked on steadily to meet his fate.

As Potter drew closer to the clearing where the Dark Lord stood, Snape had followed, refusing to consider what he had left behind, only knowing with every fiber of his being that he was about to witness the confrontation he had spent his life preparing for. And then suddenly, the forest had been alive with thundering footsteps, and he had watched, amazed, as the remnants of the Order, the defenders of Hogwarts, charged past him, and he was caught up in the surge of bodies that pressed in, prepared to fight, determined still to try to turn the tide. When the battle had begun, he'd raised his wand as well, though there was no place for him here, no side that would count him as a friend. He'd fought brutally, ruthlessly, Stunning the Death Eaters from behind, double teaming them with members of the Order who would never know that he had been there. As the hexes flew from his wand, he knew that, Disillusioned or not, there was a great likelihood that he would take a curse himself. The forest fairly churned with warriors, and the spells flew wildly, unchecked. It did not matter. What mattered was that he fought, that he would die fighting. He would not hide somewhere, waiting, like a coward. He would see it finished.

When Hermione raised the sword and slew the snake, he knew. He knew that the end had come, that the Dark Lord was ready to unveil his final weapon.

He edged almost imperceptibly back toward the trees. He needed a vantage point from which to watch this final confrontation, a place from which to act, if necessary, without being noticed or hindered by those who surrounded him. He twitched his wand subtly in his fist and cast a Distracting Charm over himself as an added precaution, and slipped between Lucius Malfoy and Arthur Weasley, who stood, improbably, side-by-side, their duel forgotten, their attention focused on the two wizards who had begun to circle one another like angry dogs.

"So the Mudblood has killed my snake," the Dark Lord said, almost conversationally, and the noises of battle began to hush and die away as Voldemort spoke in a chillingly quiet voice. "The Mudblood has killed my snake, and you think that gives you some sort of power over me, don't you, Harry Potter?"

Potter turned from the Dark Lord for a moment and addressed the crowd, most particularly, it seemed to Snape, the knot of Gryffindors who stood just outside the circle that he and Voldemort were making. "I don't want anyone to try to help. It's got to be like this. It's got to be me." He turned back to Voldemort and spoke quietly, but in the silence, his voice rang out like a clarion call. "They're all gone now," Potter said. "All your Horcruxes." He spat the word out as if it were something distasteful. "You're just a man again, Tom Riddle, just as mortal as I am."

Potter's words struck him cold with fear. Did the boy not know? Had he not received the message, or had he disregarded it? Every muscle in Snape's body tensed as he watched the boy carefully for some sign. His wand was raised--raised!--though Snape had told him, had given him Dumbledore's very words--

"Ah, but you are mistaken. I do not need the Horcruxes for immortality, Harry Potter. Less than an hour ago, I secured a weapon even more powerful than those I had already. But perhaps you already know of it. Perhaps it is familiar." He held his wand aloft, and Snape's eyes went to it almost against his will. The Elder Wand, Dumbledore's wand, gleamed dark and long in the moonlight. Several members of the Order gasped, recognizing it, Snape presumed, though they could not understand its significance.

Potter said nothing but continued to pace, and Snape thought he saw something like worry pass over the Dark Lord's face.

"Do you fail to recognize Dumbledore's wand? The wand of the man who protected you, who ensured that you would live to see this day? I have taken your master's wand, Harry Potter, and your master's life, and there is no one to protect you now." Voldemort swept the wand over his body. "Shields will not be necessary any longer. This wand completes my power. Nothing can harm me."

Potter stopped. His hands fell to his sides. His tone was casual, almost light, but Snape could see that he shook violently, though he tried to hide it. "That's very impressive. But are you certain that wand belongs to you? Absolutely certain?"

The Dark Lord's face seemed to twist with triumph. "I told you, Potter, or weren't you listening? I took the mastery of this wand tonight. Severus Snape lies dead in the Shrieking Shack. I took the wand from Dumbledore and its allegiance from the man who killed him. The wand is mine."

"I see," Potter said. "I only ask because it seems to me that you have not always been very clear about what belongs to you."

Voldemort waved the wand impatiently, as if batting away a fly. "I am growing tired of you, Harry Potter. Tired of you and your silly games and insinuations. What is this latest bit of nonsense?"

"The man from whom you took that wand--the man that you believe you killed--"

Snape could not breathe. Did Potter know he lived? Had Hermione told him what she had done?

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"Did you? Or did Dumbledore plan his own death, plan it with a man you thought belonged to you?"

Voldemort's pale skin was pink-tinged with rage. He was nearly vibrating with the need to strike. "Lies," he hissed.

"Snape wasn't yours!" Potter roared, and to the man they discussed, a man who had managed to reach the edge of the clearing, it seemed as if they spoke of someone he had never heard of, a stranger. "Snape was a spy--Dumbledore's spy!"

Voldemort chuckled. "So he told you, Potter. Of course he told you that. But Severus Snape was my servant. Until the very end, he brought me news of your whereabouts, of your silly plans..."

"Did he now? Did he tell you that on Dumbledore's orders, he brought me the sword that killed your Horcruxes? Did he happen to mention that he helped us escape from Malfoy--"

"It matters not!" Voldemort said angrily. "What difference does it make who Snape belonged to? He is dead. They are dead, both of them, Snape and Dumbledore, and I am alive. Alive and in control of the Elder Wand, the Deathstick--Death's own wand."

"Kill me, then."

There was a general shriek of protest from those fighting for the Light. Hermione had caught the Weasley girl around the waist and was holding the half-sobbing, half-struggling figure tightly.

"Go ahead and kill me if you think you can." Potter's hands hung limp at his sides.

The Dark Lord hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but his face was solemn and wary as he shouted, "Avada Kedavra!"

Green light shot from the Elder Wand, and Potter fell to the ground. Snape's eyes did not leave the Dark Lord's ugly, snakelike face as it happened, and he saw in it the fear that the child had been right after all, that something would prevent him from triumphing at last, but as Potter's body crumpled, Voldemort's face burned incandescent with pleasure, with victory.

The crowd seemed to wait for a moment, as if they could not understand what had taken place. Order members and Death Eaters alike leaned forward for a better glimpse of the broken body of Harry Potter. A scream pierced the night, more harrowing than anything that he had ever heard, the sound of hope extinguished, of pain everlasting, and he looked into his young wife's face and saw a blankness there that terrified him, saw her release the Weasley girl, whose scream went on and on like death's very knell, saw Hermione fall to her knees beside Potter.

What he felt, he could not name. There were no words for the end of reason, the end of options, the end. He stood as numb and shocked as if he himself had been hit with the curse, and yet why should that be, when they had known all along that Ollivander could be wrong, that it was possible the mastery would not be enough? The Dark Lord had used the Killing Curse, as he had so many years ago, as he had so many night's in Snape's own dreams. The Killing Curse, against which the Vita Secundus would have been no match, and his sacrifice rendered impotent.

His eyes strayed involuntarily to Hermione once more. She looked as if she had been... disconnected... and though he refused to acknowledge the thought, for the briefest second he thought knew why she had done what she had, that perhaps she had known this moment was coming and could not have borne it any other way.

The Death Eaters began to turn on the Order once more, and Snape saw Nymphadora Tonks fall under the Killing Curse, and the look on her face as she tumbled to the ground was almost grateful. But Voldemort raised his thin, pale arms above his head and called for silence.

"Step back," he said. "Do not strike. I do not wish to spill any more magical blood tonight. Let them see their hero, this child they trusted. Let them look upon him now and see that it is over. I have won."

The Death Eaters drew back, and for a moment, no one stepped forward. The defenders of Hogwarts stood frozen with shock while Hermione lay her head against Potter's shoulder as if preparing to lie down and die beside him. He watched as she closed her eyes. Snape felt perversely grateful when finally, Molly Weasley came forward, knelt, and gathered Hermione into her arms, lifting her away from Potter and rocking her, while her own daughter sobbed against her father's chest. What he saw, he could not process, and he knew that the Dark Lord looked upon it with contempt. Small comforts in the face of defeat. Love that did not end, but followed its keepers down into the abyss.

When Potter rose, when he picked up his wand from where it lay beside him, Snape thought perhaps he had gone mad. Perhaps fear and grief had turned on him and taken the last of his mind. But when Potter raised his wand and struck, when the green flash bore down upon the Dark Lord, Snape felt the curse whip through him as well, and the sensation was oddly akin to pain, although perhaps it was more accurately the shock of pain ending, the lifting of a pain so familiar that he had begun to mistake it for the feeling of being alive.

He did not look into the screeching crowd, but lifted his left sleeve to reveal his arm, which was so smooth and white that it seemed to glow in the darkness. Something rose in his throat and seemed to cut off his ability to breathe. He blinked and blinked, and tears fell upon his skin, but he did not feel them. It was gone. It was gone at last. For a moment, he badly wished that he could run into the clearing and show her, that he could feel her small, soft hands running over skin that would never burn again, would never call him to witness or perform unspeakable things.

When he looked back at the scene before him, chaos reigned. The Order, for once, had not paused to celebrate, but had charged the Death Eaters, Disarming, Stupefying and Binding them, and in their eyes he saw the kind of righteous fury that the Order had so rarely possessed in battle--with their Stunners and their manners--but it seemed to him just then that they intended to exact a very severe punishment for the shock they had just suffered, that there would be hell to pay for the moments in which Potter had seemed to lie dead on the forest floor. The air filled with the popping of Apparition as the masked who lived took flight, and Snape took one last look at the body of his erstwhile master, his insane face expressionless, the red eyes blank and dead. It was over.

He scanned the crowd for Hermione, but he did not see her. She had proceeded into this new world without him, gone where he could not go. It was her future now, and he tried to be grateful for that, but found that he could not. Victory stung differently than defeat, but they both carried with them the promise of worlds in which he could take no part, and as the stragglers reconvened to make their plans, he spun away to the only place left that would receive him.

***

When Harry's eyes had opened, Hermione had not believed it. Her mind--though it was the mind of a woman whose childhood had been populated with miracles--was simply unprepared for the appearance of two resurrections in a so short a span of time, and she had stared, fascinated by the image her traumatized mind had produced, until the image raised its wand, shouted Avada Kedavra and ended it all.

When Kingsley had given his orders and charged into the circle, Hermione had not run to apprehend the Death Eaters, but clung to Harry as if he were made of smoke, as if he might disintegrate and blow away if she did not keep a firm hold on him. She knew that Ron was beside her because he kept chanting, "It worked, it worked, it worked," but she had no sense of what those words might mean, of how these things had come to pass, and she stood there dumbly, her hands wrapped around Harry's arm. Ginny was there, and she was vaguely sorry that she could not leave them alone, but it was very important that she keep watch over Harry because that was her job. His life was her responsibility now--because she had failed to follow orders; she had given the life she owed him to someone else.

Gentle hands covered hers and began to peel her fingers from Harry's bicep, but she shook her head violently and dug in, prepared to hold on no matter what happened, no matter how they tortured her.

"One, then? Just one?" Ron said, and reluctantly she allowed him to take one of her hands.

"That's all," she told him seriously, and he nodded back equally solemnly.

"Harry," Ron said.

Hermione watched as her boys' eyes met and filled with tears, and Harry's free arm rose to wind around Ron's neck, and she was crushed between them. A strange sound escaped Ron's lips and rang in her ears as the three of them stood there, shocked senseless and terrified by victory, unable to let each other go.

Her tears fell freely then, and privately, she thought it was possible that she would never stop crying, that she would never bring herself to leave the cage of Ron's and Harry's arms, that she would live a lifetime here in their embrace. Victory was not sweet, but thick and tangy as blood, sharp as a sword. She held on to Harry and Ron in a death grip and would not let go, not even when they turned her gently and began to walk back to the castle.