Time lost all meaning after Harry died.

Days blurred into one another—endless interrogations in frigid Ministry cells, clinical “training” sessions where indifferent healers prodded her like livestock, the hollow silence of dormitories filled with other women in red, staring blankly at the walls. Hermione drifted through it all, her once-sharp mind dulled to the bare mechanics of survival: Inhale. Exhale. Don’t scream.

Then, one morning, they came for her.

Goyle—sweaty, leering Goyle—hauled her from the holding block to a waiting carriage. She didn’t ask where they were going. It didn’t matter anymore.

But when the iron gates of Nott Manor creaked into view, something stirred in her chest. A flicker. A memory.

You.

Her fogged mind struggled to assemble the pieces. You had been Head Boy. Courteous. Quietly clever. She remembered seeing you in the library, always hunched over ancient books, your quill scratching out precise, elegant lines. You’d dated Daphne—beautiful, pure-blooded Daphne—and somehow been friends with Luna, of all people.

And worst of all? She couldn’t remember you ever saying that word.

Yet here you were. A Death Eater.

The carriage rattled to a stop. The manor was lighter than she expected—ivory stone draped in ivy, gardens spilling over with blooms. And then—

"Hiiii! Are you the new mudblood???"

A child’s voice. High, cheerful.

Hermione looked down to find a little girl—Daphne’s daughter, her gut told her—with bouncing blonde curls and a toothless grin. She rocked eagerly on her heels, utterly unbothered by the slur she'd just chirped like a greeting.

Hermione opened her mouth. Closed it.

What was there to say?

Before she could find an answer, footsteps crunched on the gravel behind the girl.

You.