Chapter 20:  The Way the World Works

        It's funny really, the way the world works. Hermione had spent almost nine years of her life living rather dangerously. Life threatening occurrences were par for the course when one was best friends with Harry Potter. Along with Ron, the three of them had always running off into the maw of almost certain death and had thus far come back relatively unscathed. Sure, she had been petrified in her second year, and the memory of that polyjuice catastrophe was never far from her mind. But all in all, Hermione had been extremely fortunate. This type of luck leads one, unsurprisingly, to a false sense of security. Needless to say, it came as quite a shock when she nearly died.

        There was pain. Sharp and burning, it was the first thing that Hermione knew when she woke up. The ache muddled her thoughts. She was on fire. A distant part of her mind, the most coherent, tried unsuccessfully to remember why she hurt. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to breathe. Pain overrode every sense that she had. Her ears rang shrilly. Her nose burned with every thready intake of breath. Her skin felt tight and thin as if she had spent too much time in the sun. Her mouth was hot, dry, and swollen. Hermione tried to swallow and moaned.

        "Hermione?" A panicked voice called from far away. "Hermione, can you hear me?"

        Hermione struggled to open her eyes the pleading in the distant voice urging her on. She finally managed to open eyes that were so bloodshot it was hard to determine where exactly her irises began.

        So bright. The world was so bright. Glittering white walls reflected sunlight back upon her in dizzying waves. Hermione wanted to close her eyes again but before she could a familiar set of eyes met hers.

        "M...M..." Hermione tried to speak through cracked lips.

        "You're awake." Her mother whispered, her glistening eyes filling up with tears. "She's awake. Oh thank God, she's awake."

        Hermione wanted to ask what was going on. She wanted to know why she hurt. She wanted to know why her mother looked like she had been crying for hours. But all that passed from her parched lips was a gurgle followed by a racking cough that forced blood up her throat, stinging the insides of her mouth with its metallic tang.

        A hand was on her back, causing her to whimper in pain as it pressed against the painfully sensitive skin there. But the hand didn't move. Instead it pushed her forward, forcing her to sit up. Hermione would have struggled against the hand if she had the strength. A glass was pushed against her aching lips. Hermione greedily accepted it, hoping to cool the inside of her throat, which felt as dry as if she had gone her whole life without water.

        But there wasn't water in the glass. Instead a strong smelling potion scalded her. Hermione could hear screaming so shrill that it hurt her ears. Her screaming. Somewhere beyond the periphery of what her eyes could focus on Hermione could hear her mother sobbing.

        "Please, Ms. Granger, you have to drink." They were such kind words from the one who was causing her pain.

        Her eyes searched desperately for her attacker, for the speaker, and then she could see Headmaster Dumbledore. He held the glass in one hand while the other kept her upright.

        "I know that it hurts, but you must drink." He said bringing the glass back to her lips.

        She was too tired to fight him. The fiery liquid poured, unhindered, down her throat in agonizing swallows. Tears leaked down her cheeks in hot rivulets, the salt cracking the already dehydrated skin.

        Hermione drank it all, despite the pain. As Dumbledore lowered her back down, Hermione's eyes closed. Tight hands gripped her shoulders. The pain was initially fierce but faded as the she began to lose consciousness.

        "Don't close your eyes, Hermione, please." Her mother's voice was screaming desperately. "Hermione, darling, please..."

        When she woke again, the room was dark, but she wasn't alone. Shadowy figures that she couldn't quite see hovered near the foot of the bed, talking in whispered voices that made her head pound.

        "Ha..." She managed to force out.

        The figures both jumped in surprise before rushing to her side.

        "Hermione, can you hear me?" A hand took hers carefully.

        The touch hurt but it was comforting and gentle.

        "R...Ron?" She whispered, her throat aching.

        "Quick, Harry, before she goes out again." Ron said loudly.

        Her vision trembled at the decibel of his voice. Hermione blinked her eyes slowly trying to force them to be steady.

        Hands were slipping underneath her. Hoisting her up in what was probably a most careful manner.

        "N...no, hurts." Hermione whimpered at the touches.

        Again, that cold glass was against her lips. Hermione found the strength this time to turn her head away but Ron was grasping her chin, forcing her to open her mouth.

        "Please," Harry pleaded near her right ear. "Please drink it."

        Once again, Hermione did as she was told.

        She had only just closed her eyes for a moment but Ron and Harry were gone when she opened them again. Soft, dawn light was coloring the room grey. Someone was crying. Her mother was crying again.

        "Please, dearest, don't cry." Her father's voice was soothing. "Dumbledore says...he says that she can hear us."

        "Hear?" Her mother's voice was shrill. "How can she hear anything, she's hardly alive!"

        Despite the pain, Hermione felt slightly disgruntled at this. Hermione tried to tell them that despite all of her other ailments, the burning skin, the painful eyesight, the bloody lips, and dried throat, her ears seemed to be working all right. But all she managed to say was, "Hear."

        Her mother gasped.

        Hermione closed her eyes as her parents both scrambled to their feet in a hustle of clothes and colors. The movement swam around her, making Hermione feel nauseous.

        Her mother's hand took hers. "Darling, Hermione, what are you trying to say?"

        "Hear," Hermione repeated. "Can hear."

        "She can hear us." Her mother was quickly dissolving into tears again.

        Hermione wished she would stop doing that; it made her heart hurt, and enough of Hermione was hurting already.

        Her father's voice distracted her, "Hermione, Dumbledore says that you must drink this, he says that it will help."

        Hermione whimpered at the thought.

        "He says, he says that it will help." He repeated his hands were pulling her forward. "Be a good girl for Dad, drink it."

        Hermione didn't have the heart or the strength to fight them and she was becoming used the pain.

        It was dark again. Hermione wished that time would stop sneaking past her like this. She could have sworn that only a few minutes ago she had been with her parents in the light.

        Someone was holding her hand. Someone was smoothing back her hair. It took Hermione's weak eyes a few moments to realize who it was.

        "Sirius?" She was able to say fully.

        "Hermione?" Sirius replied, leaning down to look at her as if not believing his own ears. He breathed a sigh of relief and gently kissed her forehead. "I was so worried."

        Hermione was still having a great deal of trouble muddling through her thoughts but one thing was certain, if Sirius was worried for her then the situation must be far worse than she imagined. "Sirius," Hermione struggled to speak through her dry mouth, "Am I dying?"

        His dark eyes went wide at the question and his hand tightened harshly around hers.

        "No, Hermione, not if you drink this." Another voice replied.

        Professor Lupin stood to her other side, the hated glass in his hand. Sirius pulled her up. His arm around her back, he cradled her against him while Lupin administered the vile drink. She stayed awake far longer with them than she had with anyone else. Lupin smiled and talked to her like nothing in the world was amiss. While Sirius continued to hold her hand and brush his fingers against her scalp in soothing touches.

        Hermione tried so hard not to fall asleep. She tried so hard not to lose her fragile grasp on time. But she was so very tired, and she hurt so very much.

        "Sirius," She murmured to him, wanting him to help her, wanting him to keep her awake.

        His lips were on her forehead again, his voice soft in her ear, "Stay with me, Hermione."

        But she was already gone.

~*~*~*~

        "Do you remember anything?" The Auror asked her softly.

        "You've already asked her that." Ron snapped short-temperedly.

        "The more times we go over it the more likely it is that Ms. Granger will remember something of value." The Auror, Hermione couldn't remember his name, replied coldly; his soft tone slipping as he addressed Ron.

        "It... it's all right, Ron." Hermione soothed in a voice that was a mere shadow of what it had been a week ago. "H...helps to go over..." Even though her head was beginning to pound worrisomely.

        Today was the first day that she was able to sit up on her own. It was the first that in which she was able to take the potion on her own. And it was the first day in which the waiting Aurors were allowed anywhere near her.

        "I..." Hermione started coughing suddenly, her chest aching with the effort. Her mother moved to her side and helped her drink some water. At least she had stopped coughing up blood. "...got off the train. Th... there was," Hermione paused as she felt suddenly dizzy, "a strange smell in the air and then...and then..." Hermione's voice cracked painfully, "I was here."

        "That wasn't your usual stop, was it? So the attack couldn't have been aimed at Mr. Potter, who usually meets you in the Underground."

        Hermione shook her head slowly, "Not the usual stop. I had wanted," Her back spasmed with pain and Hermione clenched her teeth, waiting for the cramp to pass. "...Wanted to get a newspaper." She whispered hoarsely when the worst of the pain had passed.

        The Auror looked her questioningly, "You couldn't have waited three extra stops?"

        Hermione tried to smile but managed to only force one side of her mouth up. Her muscles were still overwrought. Apparently, she had done quite a lot of screaming that she couldn't remember. "I was impatient."

        "You do realize that if you hadn't..." He began but was cut off by Ron.

        "No, she hasn't yet realized." He growled.

        Hermione appreciated his defensive sarcasm. She didn't need any more people telling her that if she hadn't stopped, she wouldn't be in St. Mungo's suffering from a severe poisoning.

        The Auror switched topics immediately. "You mentioned a smell, can you tell me anything about it?"

        Hermione rested back against her pillows, remembering that morning that should have had been like any other morning. "It... It was sweet. Sickeningly so. I could smell asphodel and poppies. Then people started..." Hermione closed her eyes at the painful memory, "collapsing."

        "Did you see anyone?" He asked.

        Hermione shook her head.

        "Was it a random Death Eater attack?" Ron asked.

        "Yes, the Dark Mark was sent off only moments before the Aurors arrived. You're being there seems to be just bad luck, Ms. Granger." The Auror stood, "I'll let you rest now, maybe we can talk again in a few days."

        Hermione nodded sleepily.

        The Auror shook hands with her father and told her mother something about how someone would be punished but Hermione didn't care. She was still lost in the memory. There had been so many people there. "How many people?"

        "What?" Ron turned to look at her.

        "How many people died?"

        The Auror studied the notes in his hands. "We're not sure yet, the number keeps rising, at least fifty."

        Hermione nodded, rolling the number over in her head as she settled down to sleep. At least fifty. But the number was still rising. The Death Eaters had killed at least fifty people for no reason. It was the last thing on her mind as she stumbled once again into sleep.

~*~*~*~

        It was on the ninth day that Draco came. Hermione wasn't sure how long he had been there. He wasn't there when she had gone to sleep but he was when she woke up again. Hermione couldn't say how long he stayed with her either, her sense of time still wasn't what it was, seconds would slow to hours while whole days were gone through her fingers in the blink of her eye.

        "Potter says you're getting better." It was the first thing that he said.

        He stood with his back to her. His dark colored robes blending in the shadowed midnight of her room. Hermione wouldn't have even seen him if it wasn't for that too-bright blonde hair of his.

        "Draco," Like always, it took a great deal of concentration not to slur her words. "I was wondering if you w... would be coming."

        He looked at her, almost coldly, over his shoulder. "Do you think this was the first time that I came?"

        Hermione frowned slightly, her head was hurting again, "I... I don't remember." Her throat hurt, the taste of that vile potion still lingered there. "I am sorry, Draco."

        He turned then, angrily, "You have nothing to be sorry for!"

        His yell made her head hurt. But he was obviously in more pain. Draco's hands were closed into tight, white fists. As she watched blood began to trickle between his closed fingers and dripped onto the institutional-blue tiled floors. He was trembling with barely contained rage. Not at her, she knew that, but the intensity still frightened her. Hermione could think of only a few other times when she had seen him so discomposed.

        "I didn't know."

        "I know that." Hermione replied quickly.

        "I never would have let them..."

        "I...I know that, Draco." Not for the last time Hermione wanted to comfort him.

        He bowed his head; the usual finely groomed hair was loose and messy. He wouldn't look at her.

        "I would have stopped them, I wouldn't have let them." His voice was rising.

        "I know th...that." She meant to be soothing but her voice cracked painfully and Draco flinched.

        "I would have protected you!" His words were a shout.

        Hermione cringed.

        "What the hell do you think you're doing?" A voice hissed from the door.

        Harry stood just inside the room, Ron a step behind him.

        "We told you not to upset her." Harry's voice was cold. Ron clenched his hands into fists obviously ready for a fight.

        "Shouldn't have let the bastard in." Ron growled, "For all we know..."

        Draco took a threatening step towards Ron his hands twitching as he fought the urge to draw his wand. "For all you know what?"

        Hermione murmured unhappily from the bed but they didn't hear her.

        "Ron," Harry warned his friend.

        But the redhead stepped past Harry. His face was livid as he fought to keep his voice low. "No, Harry, how do we know that... I mean, for all we know Malfoy here was in the middle of it. The Aurors have determined that the fumes of some unknown potion caused the deaths. We all know how good Malfoy is at potions."

        "P...please don't." Hermione struggled against her blankets, trying to free herself from their constrictive bindings.

        Harry stood back from Ron and Draco who were now facing off. Ron's face was bright red, his hands still clenched into fists while his body was visibly oscillating in anger. Draco was his polar opposite. He was very pale and still. He had finally forced his hands to uncurl, they lay quiet at his sides, the only movement was a slight twitch to his fingers that desperately wanted his wand.

        "You think I had something to do with this?" Draco gestured in Hermione's direction.

        "Not directly." Harry replied.

        "You think that I would slaughter all those people?"

        Ron laughed harshly without amusement, "You're a Slytherin. You're a Death Eater."

        Hermione was finally able to free her screaming limbs from the blankets. She grasped the edge of the small nightstand next to her. They could fight if they wanted, but she was not going to stay and watch.

        Draco made no comment at Ron's words only looked away from him angrily. "You don't know anything." He said finally.

        Ron snorted, "Oh yeah, we know that you've got some weird thing for Hermione going on, but besides that, what's to stop you from becoming just like your fath..."

        Ron stopped short as Draco pulled his wand.

        "Don't you ever," Draco's entire body was shaking now, except for his wand hand, which was still and steady. "Compare me to that man!"

        Hermione pulled herself out of the bed.

        There was a surprised cry from Harry and the other two as her feet hit the floor and she immediately crumpled to the ground with a pained whimper. They were at her side in a second.

        

        "What are you doing?" Ron and Harry asked in unison as they crouched in front of her.

        Draco stood behind them wearing a guilty expression.

        Hermione felt tears prick at her eyes as she shuddered against the storm of pain that was coming from every nerve in her body. "Not staying." She managed finally through clenched teeth.

        "Huh?" Ron questioned.

        "Didn't you hear her, Weasley? She's not staying if we're fighting." Draco gave Ron his best scowl.

        Hermione would have smiled had she not been crying. Draco was always good at hearing unspoken words.

        Ron stood sheepishly to one side as Harry helped Hermione back into bed. "I hadn't meant..." He began apologetically towards Draco.

        "They still don't know what potion was used, do they?" Draco asked after a moment of silence.

        Harry and Ron shook their heads.

        "Well," Hermione whispered softly as her tears stopped, "someone had bet... better figure it out."

        Ron looked away from her while Harry coughed uncomfortably.

        Draco watched them both closely. "You're not getting better, are you?"

        "Of course she is," Harry snapped.

        Ron nodded vigorously, his red hair going every which way. "She's going to be fine."

        "No, I'm not." Hermione spoke the truth simply. There was no need to dress it up, the potion that Dumbledore brought her helped, but it wasn't an antidote. "The...the poison is burning me up."

        Ron slowly sank into a chair next to her bed and bowed his head silently. Harry started cleaning his glasses; Hermione realized that he was doing that a lot lately.

        "Dumbledore and Snape are looking for an antidote. They'll find one." Harry said finally as he put his glasses back on.

        Hermione closed her eyes, she was tired again, all she seemed to do now was sleep.

        "They won't find it." Draco said firmly.

        Ron glared up at him, "Don't talk like that."

        "It's the truth. It's obviously a potion dripping with dark magic. Your bleeding-heart Headmaster has never gotten that stuff. It won't be in any of Professor Snape's books either. Voldemort wouldn't have chosen a potion that he knows, doesn't really trust him anymore." Draco began pacing as he talked.

        "How do you know that?" Harry asked.

        "Voldemort would have had Snape brew the potion if he did."

        Ron got to his feet, angry again, "So we should just give up then? Is that what you're saying?"

        "Oh don't be daft." Draco replied coldly. "We'll find it ourselves."

        Harry folded his arms over his chest, "What do you mean 'we'?"

        "We, as in you, Weasley, and I will go break into Lucius' library." Draco spoke with a pointed slowness as if Harry and Ron were little children that needed extra help understanding. "If we don't find it there, we'll go to the vault at Gringotts. If it's not there then we'll think of something else."

        Hermione was frowning at him, "Dangerous." She muttered.

        "Indeed." Draco agreed. "But I'm not about to let you die. And besides, danger is my middle name."

        "I th...thought it was 'trouble'?" Hermione returned.

        "Good catch," Draco commented, "I had it changed."

        "What the hell are they going on about?" Ron asked Harry.

        Harry ignored Ron, "So when do we leave?"

        Draco looked at Harry appraisingly. "We leave now."

~*~*~*~

        They never did tell her what happened. All she knew, which was only a bit more than most people knew, was that Harry and Ron disappeared for three whole days after they left the hospital with Draco. When they returned, they bore signs of a fierce fight. Harry had a noticeable limp for a week while Ron now had a long, jagged scar that crossed from his right shoulder across his chest to end a few inches above his left hipbone. He could have magicked it away but Hermione knew that he was very proud of his battle scar.

        But what they returned with, more importantly than any of their injuries, was a potions book stained with blood and one dose of the antidote needed to cure her. Their friends had been stunned; everyone with even the slightest magical ability had been looking for a cure night and day since the attack. But when questioned about how they had managed to find it, Harry and Ron would only shrug. When Hermione asked what happened they had simply told her that she would really rather not know. She accepted that without any more questions. And Hermione got better.

        Draco was back in the hospital a night after Harry and Ron returned. They left him alone with her. Hermione didn't fail to notice that they were more at ease around each other. Draco was paler than normal, leading her to believe that he had been the recipient of a fairly nasty curse, but again, they wouldn't tell her anything.

        "Apparently, Snape has been in a foul mood over the whole thing." Draco told her nonchalantly while picking through a tin of fudge that Mrs. Weasley had brought her when she had finally started to eat solid food again. "He's furious with Potter and Weasley for finding the antidote. But as was expected, Dumbledore is brushing it all under the rug, can't have anyone asking questions about why the Golden Boy of Hogwarts had a very nasty dark magic book in his possession."

        He held out a piece of fudge to Hermione. She shook her head and he popped it into his own mouth. Just because she was capable of keeping food down didn't mean that she really wanted to eat anything.

        "You know, I still have a hard time believing that he's a spy too." Draco said after chewing thoughtfully for a while.

        Hermione watched him sleepily. It was very late, or very early, depending on how you looked at it. "Well," she said finally, "I'm not lying."

        "I know that, he just so seems the type though."

        "He was once." Hermione's voice was stronger now than it had been the last time he came to visit. The antidote that they had found was working wonders, she could feel herself getting stronger every day.

        This wasn't the first time that they had had this conversation. Hermione had told him about Snape the year before while meeting him for coffee one day. She had felt that he deserved to know; maybe things would be safer for the both of them if they knew that there was someone that the other could trust. But as far as she knew, Draco had never told Snape anything.

        "Here," Draco said suddenly as he set the fudge aside, "this is for you."

        He handed her a box. It was slender and ancient, covered in long-ago faded leather. The box was heavy in her hands.

        She turned it slowly over in her hands. "What is it?"

        Draco slouched casually back in the chair next to her bed, his elbows propped on the armrests, his fingers steepled together in front of him. "Open it."

        It wasn't that he had never given her gifts before. On every birthday and major holiday he had sent her some unmarked package via owl post. He always gave expensive things, usually out-of-print books or rare potion ingredients; Draco always said that money was no object. But the way he had held that dull burgundy box in his hands had led her to believe that money just might have been an object in this case.

        Hermione was afraid to open it.

        "Come off it, Granger, just open the damn box already. I can't spend all night here, you know, I'm not supposed to be here." Draco cut into her thoughts having correctly read her expression.

        The light was dull in her room. Only a shaded candle gave any light. It was a new moon that night and the sky was dark. But Hermione had no trouble seeing the item inside the box once she opened it. It almost seemed to give off it's own bit of light. The object was a bracelet. It was a delicate braid of silver and green. She gingerly touched it with the tip of one finger and wasn't the least bit surprised when it tingled with magic.

        "It's been in my family for generations." Draco began talking. "Supposedly it was a gift to my great grandmother's great grandmother. I came across it when Potter, Weasley, and I were in one of the Malfoy vaults trying to find you a cure. I thought you might like it."

        It was very pretty, the shiny silver caught the candle light and twinkled at Hermione while the strange green metal seemed to absorb the light for it was polished to a high shine but unlike the silver, no reflection of light came from the green.

        "What does it do?"

        "Do?" Draco asked his eyes leaving hers to study the bauble. "It doesn't do anything."

        Hermione frowned at him she wasn't an idiot. "You're lying."

        Draco gave a mock gasp, "You wound me."

        "Draco..." Hermione sat up slightly in the bed so that she could properly scowl at him, "You're normally much better at lying."

        He stood and took the bracelet from its box. "Let's call it a good luck charm, all right? I promise that it isn't evil. It wasn't made with the blood of unicorns, or babies, or fluffy bunnies. I'll just feel better knowing that you have it."

        Before she realized what he was doing he had clasped it around her wrist. It was surprisingly light. Hermione turned her arm cautiously studying it.

        "I don't know, Draco."

        "You won't even know that it's there, I promise."

        Hermione frowned at him again, she wasn't sure that she liked the sound of that.

~*~*~*~

A month after the attack, Hermione was allowed to go home, much to the tearful pleasure of her mother. She still had to take the antidote once a day for at least another week, but she no longer needed to be magically monitored around the clock.

        It was strange being home again. Never before had her bedroom felt any less like her bedroom as it did now that she had returned to it. Nothing had changed but her. Hermione felt like she had aged more in the past month and half than she had in all her time in Hogwarts. She felt tired. She felt old.

        Harry and Ron seemed to have aged too. Or maybe it wasn't that they had grown older, maybe that had just refocused on what was important. Hermione had had a lot of time to think in St. Mungo's and she realized that somehow Voldemort had become more of a distant problem to them, rather than the driving cause of their mutual lives. They had hardly talked about him this year. Hermione had hardly thought of him. But now, it was all they talked about, all that they thought about. For the attack proved to remind them of what was important. Lord Voldemort was still out there, still gathering power, still killing. It was high time that they do something about it.

        Hermione lay in her bed, covers pulled up to her chin, a glass of water in one hand. It was hard to be proactive about Voldemort when one was still bed-ridden. Hermione glanced over to her clock on the wall; Harry would be coming by in an hour with the homework and notes from their classes. Hermione had been furious when she found out that they wouldn't let her come back until she could walk in on her own. It wasn't like she almost died, well actually, it was rather like that. But she still thought that it was unfair.

        There was a light knock on her door.

        Hermione sighed deeply her mother was hovering again.

        "Hermione?" Her mother peaked around the door at her. "How're you feeling?"

        "Fine," Hermione replied truthfully.

        Her mother studied the stack of books next to her daughter's bed with an obviously worried expression in her matching brown eyes. "You know Darling, no one expects you to rush back to school."

        Hermione took a sip of water; this was not the first time that they had had this conversation.

        Her mother straightened an imaginary wrinkle in Hermione's quilt. "You're father and I have been talking and you know, it's not like you have to go back to that school at all. You can find something else to do. Something safer."

        Hermione ignored her mother.

        The older woman continued on non-perturbed. "I was talking to Molly Weasley, and she told me about how they always thought you would become a teacher at Hogwarts. You could still do that. I think that you would be very suited..."

        "No, Mom." Hermione interrupted.

        "But it's something to consider." Her mother replied quickly.

        "No, it's not, I don't want to do something different." Hermione's voice was fierce, determined.

        "But if it's so dangerous," Her mother was pale. "Harry' god father sent me a letter and he says..."

        "He did what?"

        Her mother spoke quickly, obviously sensing danger, "I'm sure that he is just worried about you. We're all worried for you."

        Hermione traced the embroidered trim of her pillowcase with one finger, "I know that. But you don't need to be worried about me."

        Her mother turned from her and began straightening the already orderly books on Hermione's bookshelf. It was an obvious sign of her distress; Hermione knew that her mother only turned her back on her daughter during a conversation when she was trying to control warring emotions.

        "I've spent the last month and a half," her mother's voice trembled, "crying myself to sleep every night because my only child was almost murdered. I think I have every right to be upset." She began rearranging Hermione's glass figurines; her father had bought her a tiny hand blown pig every year for her birthday.

        "Mom," Hermione didn't know how to comfort the older woman.

        "I think that it's perfectly understandable that I'm upset, that I want you to stop, that I want you to be safe." With her last words she turned quickly to look at her daughter. A nervous flutter of her hands sent a tiny pink glass piglet tumbling to the floor where is shattered.

        They both stared at the broken pieces for a long time.

        Finally, Hermione pushed back her blankets and carefully swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She took her wand out from under her pillow. Hermione pointed it at the broken glass and mended her pig.

        It was the first spell that she cast since the attack.

        "I am not quitting school." Hermione told her mother firmly as she carefully placed one foot then the other on the floor. "I am keeping up with my class work and I plan on being back in class in no more than two weeks."

        Her mother opened her mouth to interrupt but Hermione ignored her.

        "I will catch up on anything that I have missed." Her voice never wavered or changed pitch. "Ron, Harry, and I will graduate in early June. Then we will go to work for the Ministry and we will stop the people who did this to me from doing it to anyone else."

        Her mother snapped suddenly, "Well I won't stand for it!" Hysterical tears were shining in her eyes.

        Hermione sighed and bowed her, "I am sorry, but it is not up to you." She had never seen her mother like this.

        "As long as you live in this house..." The rest of the threat died as the enormity of it overcame her mother.

        Hermione gingerly stood, carefully testing her weight on each foot. She never would have expected those words from her mother. Never had either one of her parents spoken to her such. Her parents had raised her to make her own decisions, to pick her own place in life, to never give up on a goal.

        "Well," Hermione spoke slowly as she stood tall, "well, then I will have to live somewhere else, won't I?"

        Three weeks later Hermione, Harry, and Ron moved into their flat.