Chapter Text
It started on the Platform. Harry, Ron, and the rest of the Weasley clan come to see her and Ginny off for their final year. Hugs were being passed around, wells wished. It was quite a bizarre feeling, returning to Hogwarts after all that had happened in the previous year. Voldemort was gone, yes, but the losses that came in his wake still scarred many of the students. The mood at the platform was apprehensively joyful, Hermione thought, she wondered if it would really be possible to go back, would it feel like the home she had known for six years? Was that a complete pipe dream? Harry and Ron seemed to think so, of course she couldn’t hold it against them, especially Harry, for not wanting to return. After all, they got the ok from the Ministry to start practical Auror training, there was nothing tying them to Hogwarts anymore. It would just be her and Ginny then.
“Well, see you then.” Ron said to her, his face reddening, while leaning into an awkward side hug. Their flirtation turned fling was put to an abrupt stop shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts, when Hermione, trying very hard to make the physical side of their blossoming relationship work, never felt that lust that was so sought after, the spark, if it had been there, had died. Ron had felt it too, they could not get through their block, and ended amicably. She had cried of course. So had he. It was just another thing they had thought they had, but lost.
Turning around to give Harry a hug, she noticed them. The dark green eyes staring into her like a deer into the headlights. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if the look she was attempting to ignore was filled with the usual brutality that came from the gaze of one Pansy Parkinson.
Hermione lifted her eyes towards Pansy, and her eyes were still on her. Not to be intimidated, no matter how much the prodding eyes unnerved her, Hermione looked back, making the eye contact Pansy had been so intent to make. She held it for a minute, before the dark haired witch turned away, trudging her trunk towards the end of the steam engine. Hermione couldn’t help but notice that Pansy Parkinson was alone.
She broke the hug with Harry. “Weird”, Hermione muttered.
“What? Bothered, we won't be on the train to cause you all the usual trouble?” Harry said, elbowing Ron warmly.
“Yes, I will miss your antics dearly, almost as much as I will miss the risk of in-climate death raining down from Lord Voldemort.” Hermione replied, with an air of humor, tinged with truth. Harry chuckled with her. It almost felt too soon to laugh, but if they didn’t they would surely cry over all they had lost. “That, and Pansy Parkinson was just staring daggers at me, what do you think that is about?”
“Dunno, I think Mr. Weasley said something about the Parkinsons' awaiting trial in Azkaban, I guess she got the pass for being underaged.” Harry said, shrugging.
“D’ya reckon she's out for revenge because we won” Ron said gruffly.
She looked at him as if he had ten heads, really like she had looked at fluffy all those years ago, with confusion and a tinge of fear at what had been her knee jerk conclusion. Parkinson had managed to terrorize her with the ferocity of a vengeful bowtruckle. She had, over the past seven years, insulted everything from Hermione's teeth to her intelligence, to her lineage. She seemed to have lost everything in the war. Not to mention she was the student to insist that they should give Harry over to Voldemort. Hermione gulped.
Before she could say how ludicrous she hoped Ron’s accusations were, Ginny swept in next to her, from where she was telling her mother for the last time, that yes she would be fine, no she didn’t need anything else, yes she will send them an owl the minute she got back to Hogwarts.
“Let’s get out of here, before I get smothered.” Ginny spoke slyly. Hermione and Ginny had kept close over the summer, Ginny seemed to have been determined to hide from Harry, and the rest of her emotions, she had hardly cried since Fred’s death. She had turned to Hermione for her point of emotional contact. It wasn’t something she had a problem with, though she wondered how long she could bear the brunt, before Ginny realized that she was really just hiding. But who was she?
Hermione gave Harry and Ron her final hug goodbye, “You boys better behave yourselves while I’m gone. I love you both.” Ever since they had gone through the most traumatic days of their young lives, the three of them had made a pact to be completely honest and open, and being sure to say they loved each other whenever they would be leaving, whether it was to go to the grocery store, or in this case, departing until Christmas.
“Love you too.” they responded, the sincerity reverberated.
They hopped into the first compartment available, and shortly joined by Neville and Luna. As they pulled out of Kings Cross Station, she felt a wave of sadness overtake her. She waved at Harry, Ron and the rest of the Weasleys through the window. As they pulled through out of sight, a tear rolled down her face.
A few hours adjusting to life without her two best friends, she took a stroll through the train, feeling the familiar rumble under her feet. She let herself be taken by that feeling that used to bring her so much comfort. It was this train that brought her independence. She closed her eyes, she heard a game of exploding snap being played three compartments down. Peace.
She walked down and down the train corridors looking for some familiar faces, she certainly encountered some fourth years she had seen around the halls before, when she had been a prefect, and they, little second year babies. She found herself looking for those whose faces she would never see again. She picked up her pace.
Eventually she made it to her destination. She had scarcely realized the final train car had a caboose balcony which looked over the tracks, not many people had. Hermione was sure that she had a place to be alone. She had only found it in her fifth year prefect rounds, always eager to please, she swept the whole train, as far up and back as she could get. She needed to adjust. It felt like she had spend the whole summer 'adjusting', to a world finally at peace, and to a world deeply scarred from lost.
When she got there, however, she was not alone. She instead was met with dark green eyes.