The Muggle Project

They Were Right

"I love you Harry." responded, reaching my hand out the window to grab his.

Then his hand slipped from mine.

"I love you too." He managed to call back before we disappeared around the bend.

Even after he was gone I stared at the spot I had last seen him at. Then I took a deep breath to settle myself.

Focus, Hermione, focus. You can do this. You are a woman, you don't need constant company from Harry in order to keep yourself together.

But I was wrong. Harry was like my 'soul mate' but not in a lovers pretense. He was more along the lines of a soul sibling. Two people that were meant to be siblings but born into different families.

It was told that when spirits make their way to the unborn bodies that they would inhabit for the duration of their life, sometimes they got lost and went into another. Basically when a mother would lose her unborn child to a miscarriage, at the time when the soul is preparing to attach, sometimes it would latch onto another life.

If it wasn't for my mother having mentioned, once upon a time that she got pregnant and miscarried a year or so after I was born, I wouldn't have believed it.

But what made me believe more was that my mother knew Harry's mother. Both my and Harry's grandparents were really close friends so naturally my mother and Harry's knew each other and spent time together until her start to Hogwarts - which my mother didn't know about until I began and she put two and two together.

I know that if my mother wouldn't have miscarried, the soul that resided in Harry's body would've been inside my -would-be- brother.

"Excuse me, but I believe you are in the wrong carriage." A small voice said from behind me. "I would go somewhere else but the other first year carriages are full and the older kids won't let me-"

I turned around to address the first year girl behind me.

"It's no problem at all." I said to her before I strode into the corridor, making my way to the cabin for 7th years.

Then it was time to choose. Who would I sit by that I knew? After looking in on several cabins I found one that held the only people that I saw as friends -besides Harry and Ron- Seamus, Luna, Neville and two of my room mates Parvati and Faye.

"Hermione!" Faye was the first to speak as I slid back the compartment door. I hadn't even taken a step inside before she pulled me into her arms and held me tightly. When she released me she held me at arms length to look at me. "I thought you were dead, all of us did." She said as she glanced over her shoulder.

"Dead... No... Why did you think I was dead?" I asked as I moved inside the cabin and shut the door.

"We heard from Seamus who heard from Dean who heard from-" I held up my hand to stop her.

"Really, you guys? You are going to accept rumors that were passed along like a game of OWL..." I rolled my eyes as I moved to take a seat beside Faye who sat beside Seamus.

"A lot of people died that night, Hermione." Faye said as she placed her hand on my shoulder for a brief second.

They did. Lupin, Tonks, Lavender, Colin, Fred....

"But you were there, you saw me."

Seamus shook his head. "No one was paying attention, we were either running for our lives, fighting, or mourning the loss of friends."

Parvati began to cry. I knew why. Lavender had been her best friend.

"Parvati, I am so sorry." I moved to kneel down before her and placed my hand on her knee. "I tried to save her from Fenrir but it was too late. When we blasted him away she was already gone."

She looked up at me and I saw the tears in her red-rimmed eyes. I frowned at her but she returned it with a feeble smile.

"I just hope she didn't suffer."

I looked down at my hands before pushing myself up onto my feet. I couldn't do this. What was I thinking, coming back to Hogwarts. The horror of the past, of what happened within the walls of Hogwarts, could never be undone.

"I'm going to go and change, we should be arriving at Hogwarts shortly." I lied as I grabbed my satchel and quickly left to the loo.

When I entered into the restroom I sat down on the lid of the toilet as tears began falling from my eyes.

All my friends that had died, I wondered whether or not it was quick or painful. I hoped it wasn't painful.

I sat in silence for another thirty minutes before I decided it was a good time to change out into my school robes. Just as I straightened my tie I felt the train begin to slow. I leaned over the basin and stared at my gloomy expression in the mirror. Taking a deep breath I closed my eyes.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. This year, your final year, will be the best because you will make it so. Great things will happen. Great things will come to you. Hermione Jean Granger, stand up straight and take a deep breath and on the count of three you will open your eyes, put a smile on your face and leave the train.

I released my hold on the basin and stood up nice and tall. I inhaled a breath and held it for a beat before I slowly released it. Then I began to count.

One. Two. Three.

Opening my eyes I stared at my reflection and forced a grin upon my face. Before I could back out of my plan to move forward I unlocked the door to the loo and stepped out into the corridor of the train carriage.

It had already flooded with students making their way off the train in Hogsmead so I just went with the flow. When I exited onto the platform I started my walk to the carriages that would take me up to the school.

"Hermione, over here!" I heard Faye call from one of the several carriages. She was sitting with Seamus, Luna and Neville.

As I walked around the carriage I stopped, startled at what I saw. There, attached to the carriage was what I recognized to be a Thestral, from the many books I had read in the Hogwarts library.

"Harry was right. The carriages weren't enchanted like I had assumed. They were being pulled." I said as I took a seat between Luna and Faye. "Luna, I am so sorry I didn't believe you."

She smiled sweetly as she set down her copy of the Quibbler and looked up at me, "It's alright, no one really see's the world until they have seen death," she said in the same airy voice that she normally spoke with.

She was right. Thestrals could not be seen by those that haven't witnessed death, and until just this past year, I hadn't. During the Battle of Hogwarts, I had witnessed the murder of Lavender Brown and watched Snape's life drain out of him. I saw death, and in turn I now could see the Thestrals.