Chapter Text
Outside the possibly ruined Room of Requirement, Hermione stares down at the Fiendfyre-incinerated diadem, feeling better than she has in months. Granted, she’s slightly Fiendfyre-incinerated, as well, and she’s more tired than she can remember being ever, but none of that matters.
The Room seems to be containing the Fiendfyre, like it heard Ron’s comment earlier and gave them the safe, contained space they needed right when they needed it, just like always. The cup is handled—she did it herself, she destroyed a piece of Voldemort—and the diadem is handled. That’s two Horcruxes gone in an hour. The only one they have left is Nagini, and then Voldemort himself.
They’re so painfully close, Hermione can taste it. There’s an actual, real possibility she could wake up tomorrow, while Voldemort won’t. They might just be able to stop him.
The sounds of dueling spill down the corridor. Hermione straightens, back on alert. The Death Eaters have arrived already, but the fight is supposed to be outside, not in any hallways. There would only be people dueling in the castle if—
Her heart freezes in her chest. Percy and Fred have just come into view, backing away and firing spells rapidfire at a group in long, black cloaks and pale masks.
Death Eaters. There are Death Eaters inside Hogwarts. They’ve broken in.
And they’re battling Fred.
Hermione stumbles forward, racing toward the duel with her wand raised. There’s no way in hell she’s letting anything happen to Fred. Not now, not ever.
She mutters every protective charm she can think of as she runs, aiming her wand down toward the Weasleys’ feet to avoid the blasts of offensive spells zipping back and forth at chest level. Harry and Ron flank her, and together, they join the fight at Fred and Percy’s side.
As she prepares to square off against the Death Eaters, Hermione has a sudden, fleeting flash of memory: A wizard in a cloak and mask just like the ones in front of her, falling to his death from hundreds of feet in the air. She was so shaken back then at the very thought of someone dying, regardless of which side they were on.
She can still remember McGonagall’s stern wisdom: We’re in a war, Ms. Granger. It’s only going to get worse.
Yeah, well, so did she.
Hermione bares her teeth and starts casting. Not just spells she’s learned from Harry, not just jinxes or hexes, she casts everything. She’s spent years learning hundreds of spells, and in the clear, Cruciatus-sharpened space of her mind, dozens of them can be offensive.
But the Death Eaters are strong wizards, and their Shield Charms deflect that everything back at her. Her own shields keep sputtering out in seconds; she spends as much time fortifying defenses as she does anything else. Someone’s gotten one of the Death Eaters to fall, and one of them appears to be limping badly, but it isn’t enough.
They’re losing. Her, Percy, Ron, Harry, and Fred. They’re losing, and when they do lose, they’re all dead. Every last one of them. Hermione panics and shouts every spell that comes to mind. Harry can’t die. She can’t die. Fred cannot die.
All of a sudden, the very air seems to explode, sending everyone vaulting upward. Hermione shrieks and, thinking fast, mutters the incantation for the Cushioning Charm as rapidly as she can, hoping her wand is pointed toward the ground.
She lands with a soft thump: The Cushioning Charm worked. Relieved, Hermione scrambles to her feet amidst large chunks of rubble. Something—either from outside or within—blasted a massive hole in the wall of the castle.
She spots Harry struggling to his feet, bleeding badly, and starts to run toward him. But then, a horrible, agonized scream fills the air.
Hermione turns, her heart dropping.
Percy clatters to his knees, staring down at—
No.
Hermione only just manages to make it to Fred’s side before her legs give out.
No. No. Not this.
Not Fred. Not one of the twins.
Not here, not this, not now. No.
It can’t—he can’t—NO.
Percy, at Hermione’s side, screams and shakes Fred’s shoulders, begging him to wake up. Fred’s body lurches, ragdoll, as Percy desperately, hysterically cries.
Hermione can’t think. She can’t—she can’t—there’s nothing—no. It’s all just no.
Her wand is moving before her brain is.
“Ennervate,” she whispers, sucking in useless, rigid breaths. “Episkey! Reparifors! Ennervate! ENNERVATE!”
Nothing works.
“Hermione.” Harry’s hand lands on her shoulder. The weight of it is like a stone sinking her into the pit of an endless ocean. “Hermione. I’m sorry.”
“No!” she shrieks, wrenching out of his hold. He’s wrong. They’re all wrong. There’s nothing to be sorry about. Fred isn’t gone, he can’t be, not after all this time. Not when they’re so close to done. He can’t be.
She casts more spells while running through an inventory of the remaining supplies in her beaded bag. Potions, patches, herbs, bandages—if she knew what was wrong, she could narrow her options down, but until he wakes up, she can’t—
“Hermione.” Ron kneels at her side, resting his forehead against her temple. His voice is thick with tears. “Hermione, we have to go. We can’t—we can’t stay here.”
Something zings past overhead, and Harry leaps backward. “Get down!”
Hermione can’t move, but someone shoves a hand on her back, sending her careening forward onto Fred’s body. Spells sizzle in the air; Death Eaters are firing in through the hole in the castle wall.
“They’re coming, we need to leave!” Harry shouts. “Now, now, come on!”
But Hermione can’t hear him. She can’t hear anything.
Because she can’t hear a heartbeat. Her ear is pressed to the flat of Fred’s chest, and she can’t hear anything.
No. No.
Then, just then:
Thump. Thump.
Her breath catches, her heart soaring—
Another duo of thumps. More. And they’re not a heartbeat at all, but footfalls racing toward them. Footfalls falling in military-precise rhythm, because the fight isn’t over, and the Death Eaters have arrived in packs like rabid dogs, prowling everywhere, and she can’t—
“Hermione!” Someone drags her backward, and then Harry’s pale face fills her vision. He’s crying. “I know. I know. But we have to go.”
“No,” Hermione bellows, shoving Harry out of the way. “I have to—”
Her breath cuts out of her when she spins and takes the scene in anew.
Fred’s body is lifeless on the ground. And all around them, the battle rages on.
With rapidly numbing hands, Hermione taps her wand against her finger. Her ring shimmers into existence. She presses the two matching sapphires to her lips, thinking as hard as she can of Fred. Please be alive. Please think of me. Check-in. Come on. Let me feel you.
The ring remains cold on her lips.
“We need to move him,” Harry tells Percy. Hermione watches them lift Fred’s body up to carry him to shelter in a nearby alcove. He sags into the space, listing to the side until he falls.
No, not he; it. It falls.
Because that’s not Fred. Not anymore.
Fred is gone.
But there’s still a war to fight. There’s still someone left for her to save.
Hermione taps her wand against her ring finger, disappearing the ring before her thought of George can register in the magic. She doesn’t want to give him a reason to wonder why she’s thinking of him. She doesn’t want him to worry about it. Worry would distract him, wherever he is, and she cannot afford that. She can’t lose him, too.
Harry walks over to her, weary. “If you need to stay, stay. But I need to go.”
Hermione looks at Fred’s body one last time, then draws herself up. When she speaks, her voice is clad in iron.
“I’m with you, Harry. Let’s go kill that bastard.”
The morning of May 2, 1998, dawns like any other. The sun peels open the sky, the stars shrink back, and the ashen world blooms into color.
Voldemort is dead. The plague of his existence is no more. The Wizarding World is free.
Hermione is relieved. Tremendously, exquisitely relieved.
Voldemort’s presence in the Wizarding World has followed her from the instant she learned she was a witch. Every year, she’s learned more reasons to fear and loathe him. To confront a day without that terror with it is inconceivable, and yet, that day is here.
So, Hermione is relieved, yes. But she is not happy.
While almost everyone she knows recuperates and celebrates around her in the Great Hall, she and George sit off to the side, far away from the two lines of dead bodies forming a center aisle. They’ve cried already, and recovered, and cried all over again. Now, they just sit. His hand clenches hers as hard as hers clenches his, and they mourn the joyous life together that they’ve lost.
Fred was supposed to be here for this. They were supposed to survive together. Recuperate together. Celebrate together. They were supposed to go to a wedding with music that was sometimes slow and sometimes modern, a wedding bedecked in three colors, a wedding where they walked away conjoined.
A victory without him in it doesn’t feel like a victory.
“We loved each other, you know.”
Hermione’s hand cinches tighter around George’s in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to speak.
“We figured it out after… after we gave up on getting you.” His voice is hollow and empty, sounding the least like George Weasley it ever has. “We were hurting, and we turned to each other. We asked ourselves all the questions you asked us, about what we did and didn’t do with each other. And then we asked all the ones you didn’t.” He exhales, and it’s more of a sigh than a laugh. “We felt so stupid when we realized we both felt the same way.”
“I saw it,” Hermione replies, glancing at him with a small, sad smile. “That’s why I asked all those questions.”
“Yeah.” George’s thumb brushes over her thumb’s knuckle. “We figured that out, too.”
Hermione’s gaze catches on a dark, familiar figure along the opposite wall, where the Slytherin table usually rests. Blaise Zabini walks from cluster to cluster, passing out blankets and cups of healing potions. A long gash paints a bright pink stripe down his temple, and his pristine school uniform is bloodsoaked and coated in grime. Whatever role he played in the war, he’s here now, helping the Light instead of retreating with Voldemort’s forces.
He survived. Maybe one day, once she’s less frozen over inside, she’ll be glad for that. Now, all she can think about is who didn’t survive.
“I love you, George Weasley,” she whispers, tilting into George’s side and squeezing her eyes shut. “I loved both of you, but I love just you, too.”
George’s next breath comes out uneven as he rests his head on top of hers. His tears drip, warm and damp, down her temple and cheek.
“I love just you, too, Hermione Granger.”
Hermione stares down at her ring. She revealed it once she saw George’s, and she hasn’t found the strength yet to disappear it again. Two deep, perfect sapphires shine up at her.
A vicious, dark piece of her wants to gouge one of them out. She wants to scream, wants to throw everything against every wall until it’s as shattered and irreparable as she is. She wants to rage at any person, any creature, any god who thinks that leaving her and George to survive without Fred is any kind of fair. She wants to run across the hall and throttle Blaise for giving her such a crystal clear picture of what her life will be like, now that part of her heart is forevermore locked away.
She doesn’t do those things. She just stares down at her ring and thinks one last, desperate time, I love you, Fred Weasley. Come back. Come back to us. We need you.
Her ring glows warm.
“What?” she asks George absently. Both of their rings have been flickering with tiny bursts of heat as they remember their times with Fred together. None of them have been as sustained as this one, though. “What are you thinking about?”
George repositions his head against her. “There was this one Quidditch match we played back in fourth year, and—”
Hermione freezes, and George’s voice fades to the background.
If George isn’t thinking about her, then….
“George,” she interrupts, trying not to overreact, but also not sure if there is such a thing as an overreaction in this case. “George, think of Fred. Think of him hard. For the ring. Do it, please do it.”
“Hermione….”
“Please.”
George sighs and shuts his eyes. Hermione waits, not daring to breathe. Is she right? Is she crazy? Is Fred—
George sucks in a breath and his eyes shoot open, staring down at his ring. “Fred.”
They shoot up as one and race down the length of the room. Fred’s body is the last one of the line, the furthest from the door. Hermione and George draw the attention of a number of onlookers as they pass, but they only have eyes for Fred.
His body is still and lifeless as it was in that alcove. Hermione presses her ear to his chest, as she had accidentally in the seventh floor corridor.
Silence.
But then, then:
Thump. Thump.
The same rhythm as those footfalls, absolutely, but no one else is running now. She can tell that the sound is coming from Fred’s chest, not just through it.
Too slow, sluggish, but nevertheless there again: Thump. Thump.
“I knew it,” she breathes, unable to contain the wild, surging rush inside her. “I knew it. George, listen.”
The people at the tables around them are quieting now, turning to watch the scene.
George presses his good ear to Fred’s chest, listening hard. The noise he makes sounds ripped out of his chest and left to bleed on the floor.
“He’s alive.” George shoots upright, only to drop back down and listen again. He clutches at Fred’s shoulders. “He’s alive!”
His voice rings out over the hall, and more of the crowd falls silent.
“He’s what?” Mrs. Weasley falters to her feet and hurries toward them. “He’s—are you sure?”
The other Weasleys follow her, looking hope-stricken as she collapses at Fred’s side.
“Listen,” George says, lifting his head to give her room. He reaches for Hermione’s hand, and their fingers tangle together as tightly as they can. “Listen for his heart, Mum. It’s there.”
The hall is completely silent now as Mrs. Weasley bends her head to listen.
“Oh heaven’s me, Fred!” Mrs. Weasley warbles, sitting up and covering her mouth with her hand. She flutters her hands over his chest, as if unsure how to touch him. “Why isn’t he waking up? What’s wrong with him?”
Professor McGonagall rises from her seat halfway down the hall. “Madam Pomfrey! If you please.”
Madam Pomfrey, who has been stationed near the doors at the other end of the Great Hall to attend to whomever straggled in with injuries, bustles over. “What’s happened to him?”
“We don’t know, exactly,” Hermione tells her as Percy comes to kneel at her other side. She almost can’t hear herself over the sound of blood rushing in her ears. She needs to calm down so she can get Fred the help he needs. “We were dueling Death Eaters when something exploded the wall behind us. We all went flying. When we got back up to assess the damage, he was—” not dead, not dead, but, “—like this. Not sure if it’s magical or physical damage.”
Madam Pomfrey nodded briskly. “Clear some space, please. I need to check him.”
Everyone backs away to give her room. She mutters spell after spell, and magic fizzles upward, scribbling results in the air in colored, glowing lights. She reads over them, only to whisk her wand through the air, dispelling the lights and casting another diagnostic.
“Someone’s done work on him already,” she announces as she squints at a result through her reading glasses. “He’s received medical care.”
Hermione’s heart seizes, and George’s hand clamps tight around hers. “I—I—yes. Yes, I did. Everything that I could think of. I’m sorry, I don’t know what all I cast.”
Madam Pomfrey mutters something else, and a series of spells starts glowing mid-air, one after the next, rattling off every curative Hermione cast in her state of panic. Spell after spell after spell—dozens of them. Close to a hundred.
“Good lord,” Professor McGonagall says as the list just keeps going. “Ms. Granger….”
“I know how it looks,” she replies tightly. Ennervate appears again and again, reiterated to the point of absurdity. “I know.”
The list finally ends, and Madam Pomfrey nods once and performs another batch of diagnostics. When she’s done, she sits back on her heels.
“The explosion fractured two of the vertebrae in his neck,” she says, flicking her wand in the air several times. Several translucent vertebrae appear a foot over Fred’s body, two of them glowing red. “A fatal injury if not treated promptly.”
Here, she takes a deep breath and turns to look at Hermione.
“Ms. Granger,” she says, her eyes twinkling, “treated it promptly.”
Mrs. Weasley breaks into loud, blustering sobs.
Hermione’s knees buckle, and she falls to the ground. George is right there with her.
“He’s in a coma,” Madam Pomfrey continues, reiterating some of her diagnostics to double-check her findings. “Ms. Granger repaired the nerve damage and resolved most of the internal bleeding, but no spell can mend broken bones. One moment, please.”
They wait another few seconds, and several bottles fly in through the open doors at the other end of the hall, summoned by Madam Pomfrey a minute ago.
Hermione, too overwrought to even cry, almost laughs when she sees what the primary bottle is.
Skele-Gro. Fred needs bloody Skele-Gro.
“You saved him.”
Hermione turns her head to find George looking drawn and pale, but his eyes are vividly bright as they stare at her.
“You saved him,” he repeats at a whisper. “You saved him, you saved him.”
She… did.
“Oh my god,” she breathes as the meaning of all Pomfrey’s explanations finally hits her. Fred should be dead, but he isn’t. She did it. When it mattered the most, when the stakes were highest, she cast the bloody Cushioning Charm, and then no one died.
She did her very best, and this time, it was enough.
She expects this to be the moment she breaks down, but she can’t. Not while Fred is still motionless under Madam Pomfrey’s efficient ministrations. Hermione saved him from dying, but they’re not out of the water until he’s properly alive again.
“It’ll take a few minutes for the potions to begin working,” Madam Pomfrey says, recorking her various bottles. “Go about your business, everyone.”
Again, semi-deliriously, Hermione is tempted to laugh. They have no business to get back to. Nothing else in the entire world matters until Fred’s okay.
The minutes pass like centuries. Eventually, though, a bruised and bloody Harry startles and points. “Look!”
Hermione saw it too: Fred’s pinky twitched just a little. A single sign of life, at long last.
Hermione and George clamber to their feet as more of Fred’s fingers twitch. A moment later, his eyelids flicker, the eyes behind them moving. They pinch shut.
And, like a miracle, they crack open.
Fred—not just Fred’s body, but Fred—squints, his face twisting in pain as he smacks his lips.
“Is there a reason,” he croaks, “that there is a concerning amount of dust in my mouth?”
Hermione’s delirious laughter finally bubbles out of her. She and George stumble forward to collapse down next to Madam Pomfrey.
“Fred,” George says brokenly, beaming even as his tears fall to the stone floor. “Fred, we thought you were a goner, mate.”
Fred smacks his lips again, clearing his throat. “Yeah, that would explain why my body feels like I’ve just gone ten rounds against Hermione’s kickboxing.”
Hermione laughs again, wiping her cheeks with the filthy cuffs of her jacket. “I’m going to take that as a compliment, you know.”
“Is there….” Fred’s expression tenses, like he’s readying himself to crack a joke the moment he receives bad news. “Is there a reason I can’t move?”
“You’ve taken Skele-Gro, Mr. Weasley,” Madam Pomfrey informs him. “You can’t move anything below your neck at the moment. Please do not attempt to turn your head for several minutes; if you shift the bone while it’s healing you may cause damage.”
“Yeah, okay,” Fred exhales. “Do not damage the thing that lets you move. Got it. I’ll just get very acquainted with Dad’s shoes, then. Dad? You need new ones.”
Mr. Weasley, standing behind them all, chuckles wetly and wipes at his eyes with shaking hands. “Thank you, Fred. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Next to him, Mrs. Weasley’s blubbering sobs reach new heights.
The silence that settled over the room finally breaks. Someone from the far end of the Great Hall stands. It’s Lee Jordan. “Welcome back, Fred!”
Alicia Spinnet, a few seats down from Lee, stands as well. “We missed you, Fred!”
“Glad you’re back, Fred!”
“Good job, mate!”
“You did it!”
People are standing from every table. Oliver Wood, Neville, Cho Chang, Luna, Hagrid, Professor Flitwick, Angelina Johnson—more and more voices join the crowd, cheering Fred on.
George takes a great heave of breath before he turns toward Hermione and bundles her up to sob into her shoulder. Hermione tucks her face into the curve of his neck and hugs him back, her own tears finally coming. Not even Cruciatus-fuelled reinforcements can hold them back.
Fred’s going to be okay. This is it. He’s alive, he’s back, and he’s going to be okay.
They’re going to be okay.
One by one, the realizations unfold, each more shattering and beautiful than the last. All three of them survived. There are no more wars to fight, no more demons to conquer, no more reasons to stay apart. They never have to suffer like they’ve suffered again. They can finally, permanently be together.
Voldemort is dead. He’s dead and gone, and finally, rapturously, Hermione can feel the joy of it setting in.
Eventually, the cries toward Fred start to diversify as people stop congratulating him and start filling him in.
“We did it, Fred!”
“We got him!”
“Oh, man, you should have seen it!”
“Harry was amazing!”
“Tell him, Harry! Tell him!”
George and Hermione break apart when they hear Fred’s breath stutter.
“Really?” Fred asks tremulously. His breath catches again, fragmenting his voice down to a whisper. “Is he really… it is really over?”
Harry kneels on Pomfrey’s other side and peers down at Fred’s face. “Yeah, Fred. We did it. We won.”
Fred’s chest dips and rises unevenly, and he opens and shuts his mouth several times before groaning. “Bloody hell, it’s annoying to cry when you can’t do anything about it. No one look! I’m unsightly!”
George laughs, wiping away his own tears. “Yeah, but you’ve been that way for a while, Gred.”
“Oi, sod off, Forge, I’m broken.”
Madam Pomfrey checks her pocketwatch. “Try moving your fingers and toes, Mr. Weasley. Gentle, no sudden movements.”
Fred’s fingers spasm at his sides, then waggle smoothly. “Good sign?”
“Good sign,” Madam Pomfrey confirms. “Try rotating your head. Again, gently.”
Fred’s head slowly turns back to center, and the tears pooled at the bridge of his nose slip down his face. He blinks up at the ceiling for a moment before he spots George and Hermione again, and he repositions his head against the stone floor to get a better view. “Oh, you two are a mess.”
“We thought we’d lost you,” Hermione tells him, voice breaking even though she’s smiling.
“It’s very messy business, grief.” George shudders out a breath and squeezes Hermione’s hand so hard, the bones ache. “Let’s never tangle with it again, yeah?”
“Arms and legs, Mr. Weasley. Get your body used to moving again.” Madam Pomfrey stows away her pocketwatch and starts tending to the scrapes and bruises on Fred’s skin with jars of salve she pulls from her apron pockets. “Does anything hurt? Any other injuries that you can notice?”
Fred shifts his body, and for absolutely no reason at all, that sets off Hermione’s waterworks all over again. He’s moving. He’s really, actually going to be okay.
“Hard to say, I hurt all over.” Fred grimaces. “Nothing awful, though. Just banged up.”
“Good.” She claps her hands on her knees and stands. “Let me know if that changes.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Weasley bawls, wrapping Madam Pomfrey in a hug. “Thank you for bringing him back to us.”
Madam Pomfrey hugs Mrs. Weasley back, patting her gently. “Of course, Molly. You’re welcome.”
Fred makes to sit, and about half the Weasley family crouches down to help him shift upright. He moves his neck around slowly, pulling a face. “What happened to me? I feel like I ran headfirst into a wall.”
“Wrong way ‘round,” George offers, resting a hand on his shoulder. “The wall ran into you.”
Fred tips his head back and laughs. “Okay, tell me everything.”
By the time Fred is cleared to stand and leave, a number of the other celebrators have said their farewells. There’s an enormous amount of work to be done to rebuild, both literally and metaphorically, but everyone agrees that the rebuilding can start after everyone has gotten a day or two of rest.
Harry takes them aside and says much the same thing. There’s a good deal they have to catch up on, since Hermione and Ron still have no idea how he managed to defeat Voldemort in the end, but he insists that it can wait.
“We should all take some time,” he says, staring behind them toward where Fred is shaking hands with just about everyone left in the Great Hall. “Celebrate what we’ve kept and grieve what we haven’t.”
The final tally of fatalities hasn’t come in yet, but the list is already awful. Colin, Remus, Tonks, Snape, and Lavender—sweet, romantic Lavender—plus fifty or so others. Comprehending the weight of all those losses is going to take quite a long time, indeed.
But not yet. The grieving can wait, just like Harry’s story. Everything, finally, can wait.
“No complaints from me,” Ron says, yawning. “I’m knackered.”
Harry shifts in place, grinning hesitantly. “Ron, do you think your mum and dad would mind if I stayed at the Burrow? It’s just… I’ve just realized I’m slightly homeless. I have no idea what state Grimmauld Place was left in.”
Ron snorts. “Of course, you idiot. Like you even need to ask. Hermione, you’re welcome too, obviously.”
“Thanks,” she says, realizing all at once that now that the war is over, she has no idea what she’s expected to do with herself. Get a job? Buy another cat? Learn how to knit? “That sounds great.”
Except, when they finally return to the Weasleys, Fred and George are hearing none of it.
“You’re coming with us, obviously,” Fred insists.
“Back to Diagon Alley,” George agrees, looking much improved but still rather puffy around the eyes.
“You mean to the shop that’s been boarded up and probably raided since you last checked it?” Hermione asks, raising her eyebrows.
Fred and George wave her off. “Like we’d leave the place unprotected.”
“Come home with us, you’ll see.”
Come home with us.
Hermione smiles, feeling like now, the sun has risen on May 2, 1998.
“Yeah, alright. I will.”
May 9, 1998
Hermione rests her chin on the lip of her teacup, resting her exhausted eyes.
She never expected the week after Voldemort’s death would be the hardest. Between the flashbacks, the nightmares, and the endless volley of fan letters thanking her for her service, she’s spent the last seven days reliving some of her worst memories over and over again.
“Morning.” Harry sits down next to her, leaning back against the outer wall of the Burrow. He hides a yawn behind his hand, then accepts Hermione’s offered cup to take a sip. “Rough night again?”
Hermione hums an affirmative, watching the bushes at the opposite end of the yard rustle with gnomes. “You?”
“Yeah.” Harry takes off his glasses to rub at the corners of his eyes. “Gringotts, this time.”
“Bellatrix,” Hermione returns. She tilts her head to rest against Harry’s shoulder. “George woke up three times to check on Fred, too.”
They sleep together now. Mrs. Weasley didn’t even put up a fight about it when the twins shepherded Hermione toward their bedroom that first day. All she did was smile at Hermione, gratitude and tears shining in her eyes, and tell Fred to use extra pillows for his neck.
“No surprises there.” Harry’s jaw cracks on his yawn. “They up yet?”
“Nah.” The twins never get up as early as she does. Hermione thinks that may have less to do with their sleep schedules and more to do with their need to spend some alone time together before starting their day. Hermione doesn’t mind; she’s been in the twins’ lives for two years, but they’ve been each other’s support system forever. There are certain wounds she can’t help mend, nor will she try to.
She and Harry sit in silence, trading sips from her cup and watching the dawn bleed light across the sky.
“I’m happy you came back here,” Harry confesses quietly, resting his head on top of hers. “I know the twins are upset about the shop, but it’s been nice having you three around.”
Hermione snorts tiredly. “I still can’t believe they thought a handful of wards were going to stop Death Eaters. But yeah, agreed. It’s been good. This may sound silly, but I probably would have panicked if I’d woken up and you weren’t around. You get used to it, you know?”
“I do.” Harry exhales as sounds of life start to filter out from the cracked kitchen window. The Weasleys are starting to wake up. “Here we go again.”
For the last week, Mrs. Weasley has kept them all busy with chores to repair the Burrow whenever they aren’t being dragged off to celebrations or Ministry functions. It’s strangely reminiscent of preparing for the wedding last year. Hermione thinks that may be intentional.
Harry nudges the shoulder under her head. “You ready for another long day?”
“Actually, we’re heading to the shop this morning,” Hermione confesses, tapping her ring against the ceramic of her cup. “I think we’re going to start patching things up.”
Harry smiles at her. It’s a little sad, and even more tired, but genuine. “Good. It’s about time they got the business up and running. I’m amazed they lasted a week.”
“Don’t be.” Hermione smirks and stands, stretching as she passes Harry the remainder of her tea to drink. “They wanted to start six days ago. I’m just that bossy.”
An hour later, Hermione and the twins Apparate to Diagon Alley, which has recovered remarkably since the Battle of Hogwarts. Most of the shops have reopened in full glory, and the street is as packed as it usually only is the week before students leave for Hogwarts. Everyone wants to regain some normalcy, and Diagon Alley is the best place to get it.
Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes is dark and quiet when they approach. The day after the Battle, the twins took the time to repair and clean the signs and window fronts, as well as to post notices of their intent to take some time off, but the inside is still in ruins.
As they did last week, the twins falter when they step inside. The shelves are overturned, stacks of products scattered and flattened on the floor. The bright, colorful sign over the registers has been vandalized with what looks to be dried blood. BLOOD TRAITORS, it jeers down at them.
When the twins don’t move, Hermione takes a breath and steps forward. “Evanesco.”
The blood disappears. “Reparo.”
The twins join her as she starts to work her way around the shop. The first order of business is righting the shelves and repairing whatever fixtures have been damaged. Handling the products will come later.
She has to fight back a gasp when she finds the miniature diorama of a hangman. The little wooden man, hanged and limp, has been done up to look like her, with a tuft of brown fluff for hair and two dots of white to indicate her old buckteeth. The slots where correct letters should go reads MUDBLOOD. Above it, someone has carved DIE.
She shouldn’t be surprised. As she once told Blaise in another life, she’s the most divisively Muggleborn person in Wizarding England, and any Death Eater would know she’s close to the Weasleys. It’s logical that they would pick her to use.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“Fucking bastards.” George comes up and wraps his arms around Hermione from behind, resting his chin over her shoulder to stare at the hangman. “You okay?”
Hermione waves her wand, and the decorations on the hangman disappear. Another two spells, and the diorama is back to sorts. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
It’s slow going, even with all three of them working. Repairing the shop itself isn’t so bad, but sifting through the inventory to find salvageable products is.
“We should toss the lot,” Fred says more than once. “Just start from scratch.”
“That would be days of work,” Hermione keeps disagreeing. “Keep at it, it’s okay.”
But the longer they go, the more obvious it is that the collection of unbroken or repairable items is nothing compared to their growing rubbish pile. Even if they save everything they can, they’ll basically need to start over.
When Hermione finds herself standing in a mountain of crushed, bright pink Wonder Witch packages, she finally breaks.
“I’m sorry,” she sighs, taking in all the beautiful, clever products they’d credited to her. “I might never stop being sorry.”
“Not your fault, darling.” Fred finds an intact box and shakes it, only to frown when the pieces inside rattle, broken. He tosses it in the rubbish pile. “You didn’t do this.”
“Not that.” She finds a tin of Pepper-Up Peppermints and wipes the grime off it with her thumb. “I’m sorry I ran away that day, and that I misread everything you did. Standing here now, it’s so obvious what you were trying to tell me. We could have had so much more time, if only I hadn’t—”
“None of that, either,” George says, pausing in his efforts to stabilize an off-kilter shelf to cross to her. Fred comes with him, and they both scoop her up into one of their wonderful, sandwiching hugs. “We don’t blame you, Mione.”
“You have to. This one really is my fault.”
“Here’s how we see it,” Fred says.
“Yeah, that day was bloody awful—”
“—as were a lot of the days after—”
“—but look where we are now.”
“Look at the person you’ve become. The people we’ve become.”
“We can’t say what else would have changed if you’d acted differently that day.” George, behind her, kisses the knob of her shoulder. “That time apart, the mistakes we all made, they got us here.”
Hermione presses her nose against Fred’s throat, feeling his pulse drum like a vibrant metronome, and knows they’re right. She’s not the same person she was the first time she entered this shop. Knowing how it felt to live without the twins, coming to terms with that grief over the sixteen months of their separation, gave her the perspective she’d needed to win the war. It sharpened her, focused her, let her understand the depth of what she had to lose.
Maybe if she’d acted differently the first time she saw this beautiful, pink wall of products, she still would have become a person capable of saving Fred’s life. Maybe. But maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe, like with the Cruciatus, this pain reforged her into something new. Something better.
Maybe this is what it looks like when everything works out for the best.
“I think we should call it,” she says, wriggling until the twins set her down. She gestures around. “You two were right: It’s not worth it to pick through everything. I am sorry about that. I know how hard you two worked on all this stuff.”
“We’re not.” George mutters an incantation to vanish a whole wall of products while Fred drags Hermione to his side, draping an arm over her shoulders.
“Gives us a chance to show you how it’s all done.”
“What do you say, pet?” George vanishes another pile of broken boxes and waggles his eyebrows at her. “Want to do more than just come up with ideas?”
Hermione is startled by just how much she does. She’s always been satisfied with doing research and brainstorming new inventions, but now that she thinks about it, she might love helping out with production. She’s never actually gotten to see the twins play mad scientist before.
She starts smiling, and once she does, it’s hard to stop. “Absolutely. I’ve got nothing but time. Let’s ditch the lot.”
The twins have to recarve her name into the doorway before she can enter the back of the shop. George, blushing, tells her all about how she used to have access, but they removed her from the runes after they found her with Blaise.
“We were bitter,” Fred admits, grimacing and equally pink. “It was stupid of us.”
“Well, that makes three of us, then,” she replies, not even the slightest bit upset. “Idiots, all three. At least now we get to be idiots together.”
The back room is, blessedly, untouched. Either the Death Eaters couldn’t get through the special privacy wards, or they hadn’t bothered. Hermione finally has the chance to see the twins’ mementos of her—the Galleons, the framed Draught of Concealment recipe, the scrolls and scrolls of her notes—and she gets embarrassingly emotional about things until they whisk her off into the lab.
“Alright, Mione,” Fred says, rolling up his sleeves. He grins at her, a sparkle in his eye that she hasn’t seen from him in months. “You ready to get started?”
Hermione takes a deep breath and feels, for the scarcest of moments, like a sixteen-year-old girl about to sit at a table in the common room and bombard two boys with ideas. It feels like the start of forever.
“Let’s do it.”