Shortly after our conversation in the Forest of Dean, Harry and I returned back to Grimmauld place. I went straight to the kitchen to begin a dinner that would consist of steak and potatoes. I started tenderizing and marinating the meat before I moved to cut the potatoes.
"Here, let me do that." Harry said as he came into the kitchen and took the potato peeler from my hand.
After I handed him the peeler I watched as he began working on the five potatoes I was using for dinner. I quickly decided to add some carrots, celery and onions in with the potatoes so I grabbed those from the pantry and began dicing and cutting.
When dinner was finally on the table the two of us sat and ate in silence. Then Harry turned into his bed while I turned into the bathroom to draw a bath.
I sank into the large claw tub, allowing the near scolding water to obliterate any train of thought I had. I didn't want to think right now. The quiet times was when I began to remember. Remember everything.
"What did you take from my vault!" Bellatrix screamed in my face.
I gasped as my head was filled with the pain and memory of her torturing me.
"NO!!!!!! I screamed, flailing my arms, causing bath water to splash everywhere.
I clutched at my head as the voice of Voldemort whispered through my mind. It burned like a white hot branding iron tagging my brain. His voice was poison.
"NO!!!!!!" I screamed again.
I tried my best to rationalize my thinking. I wasn't in Malfoy Manor, Bellatrix was dead. I was safe from her.
I took a deep breath.
We weren't on the grounds of Hogwarts, in the middle of the war against Voldemort. He was dead. I was safe from him.
I took another deep breath.
It was all in my head. They were just memories, bad memories.
I took another deep breath.
I was sitting in the bath in the bathroom of the house I shared with my brother-friend Harry Potter. The war of Hogwarts was over, our enemies were dead. I was home, I was safe. I was home, I was safe.
I took another deep breath and then I opened my eyes. I could feel my entire body shaking, like someone was shaking me with force. My teeth were chattering together so loudly that I couldn't hear anything.
Looking up I saw Harry was looking right at me. His eyes were wide with shock and fear as he stared at me.
Without saying a word he pulled a large towel out of a side drawer and moved over to my side. He pulled me to my feet and quickly wrapped the towel around my body before he helped me out of the tub.
"Hermione, are you-" he began.
"No Harry," I cried, shaking my head, "I'm not alright. I'm never going to be alright." I wiped my eyes and turned to leave the bathroom.
I didn't stop walking until I reached the seclusion of my bedroom. Then I closed the door. With tears in my eyes I began to towel myself dry. After I was dressed in my night-things I climbed into the four-post bed that once belonged to Sirius' brother.
Several long, lonely, quiet minutes passed when I heard my bedroom door open and then close. I listened as footsteps crossed the bedroom floor and then I felt weight on the bed.
"Come here." I heard Harry's voice speak.
He pulled me over to him so I was laying beside him with my head on his chest. He put arm around me and then his lips pressed modestly to my forehead.
"I'm so sorry, Hermione, for all this suffering you have gone through because of being my friend." He paused and I listened to his heart beat. "If I could go back and change it all I would. I'd stay out of your life so you could have peace."
"No, Harry. If you hadn't become my friend things would be ten times worse. Not just for me but for everyone. All the times we stopped Voldemort we had done it together." I whispered to him. "Without us, together," Ron included, "Voldemort would have succeeded and all muggle borns and half bloods would be dead."
I felt Harry nod his head, but there was no verbal response from him.
We laid in silence until we fell asleep. I felt comfortable in his arms. Safe.
The next morning I woke up and slid from the bed as quietly as I could, doing my best not to disturb Harry. I went into the bathroom and quickly took a shower before I got dressed. Today was the day I would return to Hogwarts for my final year of school.
As I stood in the bathroom brushing my hair I thought about the possibilities of the school year. I filled my mind with as many affirmations as I could of all the positive things that could happen. There would only be good things.... wait, no... not good things, great things. Great things were going to happen this year.
When I finished brushing my hair I went into my room and gathered my school trunk that was full of my things. After I slung my satchel over my shoulder that contained the book I was currently reading, my iPod with music and some precious momentums, I woke Harry.
Harry would be the one seeing me off this year. He had his drivers license and a car so he offered to drive me to Kings Cross and escort me to the barrier where he would see me off on the Hogwarts Express.
"Harry, hey Harry wake up." I said as I shook him gently.
His face scrunched up as he opened his eyes. Immediately his hand shot up to shield his eyes from the sunlight cascading through the windows
"Hermione?" He looked at me and then to my bag over my shoulder before he pushed himself into a sitting position. "Blimey, is it that time already?" Without waiting for my answer he jumped to his feet and did his best to tidy the outfit he wore yesterday, which he had slept in.
In under five minutes we were out the door and on our way to Kings Cross Station.
It was ten minutes before the train was to leave as we crossed through the barrier. As I walked up to the train I couldn't help but get butterflies in my stomach. This was it, this was my final year at Hogwarts.
We stopped outside the compartment door and Harry helped me stow my trunk.
"Bye..." I said to him, forcing a smile. I wanted nothing more than to cry as I knew he wasn't going with me.
I turned to get onto the train but he caught my hand and pulled me back to him. In one swift movement he pulled to tightly against his chest and wrapped his arms around me in an embrace. Then, just like last night, he pressed his lips to my forehead. Only this time he held them there for a few more seconds.
"Get a room Potter!" Malfoy snapped as he passed us and got onto the train.
I felt my face grow warm as bitterness towards Malfoy flooded my veins. I wanted to curse him or just punch him in the face like I did in my third year.
Then the train whistle blew and Harry released me, taking a step back.
"Be safe." He said to me as I turned to get onto the train.
I moved into the first compartment, as the doors closed, to open the window.
"Goodbye and good luck Hermione." Harry said as the wheels began turning.
"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.