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Happiness	By : SlytherinWench Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 2302 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. And I do not make money from these writings.

Chapter List
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Hermione couldn�t remember the last
time she had been happy. Perhaps it was that one Christmas she had spent at the
burrow with Harry, Ron, the whole Weasley clan, Sirius, Tonks and Remus. The
one and only Christmas they had all had together before the casualties started
piling up.� Yes, she had been happy then,
she had been surrounded by her adopted family, her closest friends, all the people- sans her actual parents- who actually cared
for her and loved her. She had been content then, but recently she was
struggling to find some form of happiness in her life. Even Harry�s defeat of
Voldemort hadn�t made her joyful. Oh, she had celebrated along with everyone
else, but deep down inside she wasn�t content. So many people had lost their
lives and so many loved ones were gone forever. And for what?! For some idiotic
ideals that had no basis in fact or reality? It made her angry inside;� she was angry at
the injustice of it all. She had lost so many friends, so many role models and
teachers, and now even her own parents were lost to her. When she had returned
to them after the war, she found that rogue death eaters had beaten her to the hiding
spot. Her parents were dead, despite every effort she had made to protect them-
moving them, erasing their memories of her. It made her furious to know that
all of her efforts had been for nothing! Her parents had died without really
knowing why; they had died without knowing they even had a daughter, much less
one that was a witch. �

Hermione figured she would be
ecstatic when Voldemort was defeated, but instead she just felt an empty void
inside of her. The megalomaniac was gone, she should be jumping for joy every
second she was awake, but it was all she could do to get out of bed in the
morning. If it wasn�t for the fact that she had been able to return to Hogwarts
to complete her final year of schooling, Hermione didn�t know what she would
have done. Hermione knew that her parents would have wanted her to finish
school and make something of herself, so that�s what she was doing. She was working
hard, as usual, to finish school with top marks, she
just didn�t know what she was going to do with herself after the year was over.
She knew she was a talented witch, but she sometimes wished she was normal.
Maybe then she wouldn�t feel so overwhelmed in trying to find where she fit in
the world.

��Hermione raised her wand as she tried, again,
to cast the patronus charm. Lately, she found that no matter what she thought
of- past childhood memories with her parents, her early years at Hogwarts, her
first Outstanding on an exam- she couldn�t fully cast the patronus charm. At
least, not like Harry had. And though he was her best friend, it rankled her a
bit to know that Harry could do something that she could not. When they had
been training in Dumbledore�s Army it was the one charm she had had difficulty
with, but she had managed to get it so that her patronus would stay visible for
a fair amount of time. Now, she feared she had lost her ability to use the
charm. �So, she stole away to the Room of
Requirement and practiced. She had been practicing for over a month now and she
still only got a vague flicker of her patronus before it melted away. Her
current memory of Christmas wasn�t doing the trick either. Her patronus started
to come into view and then stopped, hanging still in the air before it melted
away for the thousandth time. Hermione huffed, exasperated with herself. This
should be easy for her! She was generally a cheerful person, wasn�t she? So why
was it so hard for her to recall a memory that made her happy?

Hermione wiped the sweat that had
started accumulating on her forehead. The patronus charm was difficult and took
a lot of energy to even try and perform- it was no wonder Harry had passed out
after he had used it on the dementors. As much as she hated to, Hermione let
her mind wander back to the final battle. She could still smell the scent of
magic in the air, hear the screams and battle cries, the
smoke burning her eyes. A few rogue dementors had been swooping toward her and Hermione
cast the charm only to have a faint outline of her patronus show up before the
dementors sliced their way through it. Ginny had suddenly appeared in front of
her, casting her own patronus to fend off the dementors. A flash of blue had
whizzed over their heads and Hermione could hear George yelling at them to �look
out�. Hermione looked up and saw little Colin Creevey hit with a curse, falling
down hard to floor. Hermione and Ginny ran over to him, but it was too late.
Colin was dead. And all Hermione could remember thinking was �It�s all my fault. If Ginny hadn�t had to save me, she could have
protected him. If I was a better witch, he would still be alive.�

Tears poured down Hermione�s face.
She had failed that day during the Battle at Hogwarts. Smartest witch of her
age or not, she had failed everyone. All the students that had died, their
blood was on her hands. She was supposed to be protecting them- her and Ginny
were supposed to be guarding the other students. If Hermione hadn�t been so
anxious to find Harry and Ron, she wouldn�t have left the room where they were hiding
the students. If she hadn�t left the room, the dementors wouldn�t have seen her
and come after her. If they hadn�t come after her, she never would�ve had to
cast the failed charm and Ginny wouldn�t have had to step in and save her. The
death eaters wouldn�t have found their room and Colin and the other students
would still be alive. Hermione tried to swallow past the lump of guilt that was
lodged in her throat. How could she be happy when she had failed so many
people?

Hermione sat on the ground of the
Room of Requirement for a long time before the tears stopped coming and she
could breathe again. She knew it was probably dinner time and her friends would
be looking for her. She picked herself up, dusted off her robe and slipped it
back on, hugging it tight to herself. She crept out of the room and made her
way down towards dinner and her friends. When she was face to face with the
Great Hall, she took a deep breath, plastered a smile on her face and pulled
the doors open. She spotted Ginny and Harry already sitting at the table and
made her way over to them. ��

�Hey �Mione!� Ginny
gave her a smile as she poured herself some pumpkin juice.

�� Hi Ginny. Hi Harry.� She smiled back as she took her seat. �Where�s
Ronald? It�s not like him to be late for a meal.�

�� He
was waiting in the common room for Lavender, so they could walk to dinner
together.� Harry replied as he unconsciously scratched his forehead. Hermione
noted that since the defeat of Voldemort, Harry would sometimes touch his
forehead where his scar had been. When Voldemort had been defeated, Harry�s
scar had disappeared as well. No one really knew why either. Hermione figured
since Harry had completely obliterated the Dark Lord, all traces of him had
been officially wiped off the planet. As for Harry constantly touching his
head, she figured it was his way of reassuring himself that the evil wizard was
really gone.

�� Yea,
apparently the fact that they have classes together and eat together is not
enough time for the two of them.� Ginny mumbled. Hermione gave a small laugh.
None of them were really a fan of Lavender, she was rather overbearing and
incredibly annoying, but she was Ron�s girlfriend and they cared for him enough
to tolerate her.

Hermione scooped some mashed
potatoes onto her plate and dug in. She was rather hungry from practicing the
patronus charm and she needed to regain her strength. Harry told her that Remus
had always given him chocolate after their lessons because it helped the most.
Hermione opted for carbs instead, she wasn�t fond of chocolate. As she chewed
the buttery goodness, she tried to organize her mind. She needed to complete a
few essays tonight, they weren�t due for a week, but she wanted to stay on top
of her studies in case she fell into another rut like she had a few weeks ago.
It had been bad. Hermione had had a hard time concentrating and couldn�t keep
herself focused enough to work even the most mundane
of tasks. Brushing her teeth had even become a chore. She had been stuck in
that rut for almost three days. Thank goodness Hermione was an overachiever and
had gotten rather far ahead in her work, otherwise her
grades would have suffered. As it was, she had had to stay up late for the
whole rest of the week to catch back up, once she was able to focus again.

The whole time she felt like she
was walking around like a zombie and she couldn�t figure out what to do to
break the daze. At first she had worried that her friends were going to notice
something was wrong, but they didn�t. They were only in a handful of her classes
and were so caught up in their own trials and tribulations that the fact that
Hermione barely raised her hand to answer questions for almost a week didn�t
seem to penetrate their minds. Hermione figured that was for the better though.
She didn�t want to talk with them about what was going on with her. How could
she explain to her friends that she didn�t know who she was anymore? That she
couldn�t see a future for herself? That no matter what she did she felt like a
gigantic failure? That she should be the one buried out in the fields, not
Colin Creevey and countless others that she had been assigned to protect? No.
Her friends had suffered as much as she had, if not more so, and she didn�t
want to rehash old wounds by talking about them. She would get over it all in
time- she had to.
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Happiness