Prologue

It‘s sort of like watching a train wreck, really. You want to stop watching, but you can’t, you just can’t. The sight before your eyes is just too horrible, and although your psyche screams at you to look away, you can't, and you are damaged in a way that is irreparable.

At least that is what Hermione Granger thought as she watched the death of Severus Snape through the memories of Harry Potter. She could have turned her back on the scene, she could have cowered in Ron’s arms; but he was looking so she had to as well. After all, he was the man who killed Dumbledore.

Even though it was on that very man’s orders.

And he had loved Harry’s mother for all of those years before Hogwarts and even after. It was mind boggling, for she had seen him in such a different way, yet he had been so much more than her image of him. Never had Hermione felt so young as she did in that very moment. She shuddered; she had just helped win a war, had just spent a year on the run from a psychotic megalomaniac, had just watched a once hated teacher die a most ignoble death; and what did she find?

She knew nothing at all about anything.

Inwardly, she cringed as her mind recalled the fact that they had merely walked past the body of Severus Snape, the man who died protecting Harry Potter from his greatest enemy merely because he had his beloved mother’s eyes.

This man, whom she hated, was nothing like the man she thought she knew, and sadness suddenly overcame her.

‘I know nothing,’ she thought, her heart feeling suddenly heavy.

Yet, there was something odd, she thought, recalling once more the image of the dark-robed wizard. His skin had paled even whiter than in life, and his eyes had glittered darker than she had ever witnessed. He was lying there in a growing pool of scarlet, and she hadn’t felt anything.

“Look. At. Me,” his voice rasped in her mind.

She was walking past his lifeless form, there was so little time and Voldemort was winning. So many had been lost and she was so tired. There was nothing more to be done in the Shrieking Shack; their place was on the grounds. Yet… with a last glance at him in her memory, she could have sworn she saw… no. It wasn’t possible, was it?

Hermione met Harry's eyes and, seeing the torment in them, decided to hold her tongue. It wouldn't do him any good to share the thought that had suddenly popped into her head. It was most likely just a trick of the eye anyway.

Yet, she could have sworn that Severus Snape had still been breathing as they passed his still body.