Until the holy white light had dissipated for a full minute, the Great Hall remained deathly silent, with no further movement indicating any possibility of the Dark Lord's resurrection.
Silence.
After a deathly silence, someone finally broke the frozen air with a trembling, tentative voice.
"...Is it over?"
"He's... really dead this time, right?"
When the first person fell to their knees trembling and cried out in joy.
The ecstasy that had been suppressed twice erupted like a long-accumulated volcano, instantly flooding the entire Hogwarts Great Hall with an unstoppable force!
People embraced and screamed, shooting their wands into the sky to set off brilliant fireworks celebrating the victory. They had won.
However, in this golden ocean of revelry following the narrow escape, there was one person like a black, isolated island, forgotten and cut off by the whole world.
Hermione Granger.
She knelt where Lia had last disappeared, her hands weakly supporting herself on the cold, cracked flagstones.
Her thin body trembled violently, as if it might fall apart at any moment.
Harry wanted to step forward to help her, but was forced back half a step by the despairing aura emanating from her, cold enough to freeze the soul.
Ron opened his mouth, but found that any words of comfort seemed utterly pale and ridiculous at this moment.
She didn't cry, nor did she scream.
She just knelt there, her intelligent brown eyes now as hollow as two black holes, staring fixedly at the empty air ahead.
It was as if her entire world, her soul, and her future had collapsed and been annihilated into nothingness along with that holy white light.
That burning thread connecting the deepest parts of her and Lia's souls, at the moment Lia detonated her own existence—
—was cruelly torn away from the root while she was still alive.
"Ugh—!"
A shrill, muffled groan escaped Hermione's throat, and she suddenly curled her body up like a trapped beast whose chest had been sliced open alive.
It wasn't a sharp sting; the pain of the Crucio was like a gentle caress in comparison.
It was as if the beating heart in her chest had been instantly gouged out, leaving a black hole that frantically sucked away all her life force, sanity, and magic.
Her heart continued to beat in vain, but she couldn't feel a trace of the blood's warmth; every pulse felt like it was knocking on an empty coffin.
Half of her soul had vanished forever with that white light.
The other half was imprisoned in this gradually cooling shell, enduring the endless lingering death known as "missing someone."
"Hermione..."
Harry spoke again with concern; he had never seen Hermione like this.
It was a deathly silence more terrifying than death itself; her body was still here, but her soul had already fallen into the bottomless Avici Hell.
Hermione slowly lowered her head with an extremely stiff posture, her dull gaze falling on the flagstones in front of her.
There was nothing left there.
No ashes, no bloodstains, not even a trace of magical resonance.
That person... that little one who always acted spoiled in her arms and wrapped her tail around her waist, had left so cleanly, erasing every trace of her existence.
No.
That's not right.
It's impossible for nothing to be left.
Hermione seemed stung by this thought; she reached out her uncontrollably trembling hands and began to grope frantically, almost neurotically, across the cracked, cold flagstones.
Her fingertips brushed against the rough stone surface, bringing only a bone-chilling despair.
Just as she was about to be completely swallowed by this void, her fingertips finally touched a cold, smooth metal object.
She used all her strength to control her fingers, which were convulsing from the magical backlash, and picked the object up from a crack in the stone.
A silver bell with edges that had been scorched black.
Tied to the bell was a small section of torn gold and red ribbon, its edges carbonized and curled.
Under the power of complete purification, the Phoenix tail feather had also lost all its luster, becoming so fragile it seemed it would shatter at a touch.
When her fingertips completely closed around the cold metal with its burnt smell, Hermione's hollow eyes finally showed a faint, almost imperceptible flicker, like embers being rekindled.
It shouldn't be this temperature.
It should have been as cold as a corpse, but now, in Hermione's perception, which had become exceptionally acute due to her soul being torn apart, the core of this bell actually held an extremely faint, almost undetectable warmth.
Like a warm nest that a timid small animal had just left, the residual heat was being rapidly swallowed by the outside cold, yet it stubbornly clung to the last shred of proof of life with all its might.
Like a drowning person clutching a straw, she gripped the tiny bell tightly in her palm, as if trying to use her own cold body temperature to hold onto that fleeting warmth.
At that moment—
Thump.
An extremely faint heartbeat, as if coming from a distant time and space across the entire world, passed through that bell, bypassed her failing senses, and struck directly into the depths of her desolate soul's ruins.
Just one beat.
But following it was not a sound, but a more tangible sensation.
A small, fuzzy, warm sensation, just like in her memory, gently brushed over her soul.
It was the tip of Lia's tail.
She seemed to hear that clear and clingy voice again, softly acting spoiled in her ear.
*"Hermione, I'm hungry! Feed me!"*
She seemed to feel again how that fuzzy, warm long tail, on every cold night, would wrap around her waist in such a bossy and stubborn way, providing her with the most stable support.
Scene by scene, frame by frame.
All the memories turned into the sharpest blades, repeatedly and heartlessly carving and slicing away at her already shattered heart.
And that faint heartbeat, along with that fleeting sensation, turned into the most insignificant yet only remaining... seed, buried beneath the endless ruins.
"Ah..."
An extremely suppressed sob, like the sound of shattering glass, escaped from deep within Hermione's throat.
Then, as if gathering the strength of a lifetime, she suddenly jerked her head up, her bloodless face showing such a distorted and painful expression for the first time.
"Aaaaaaaaah—!!!"
A shrill roar, enough to tear the sky apart and filled with endless pain and despair, erupted from her mouth!
This roar was for the loss witnessed by the whole world that could not be undone.
And it was also for that faint, almost insane hope that only she knew.
She held the tiny bell tightly, letting out a heart-wrenching and utterly helpless wail.
The deafening cheers around her seemed so pale, jarring, and even somewhat ridiculous in the face of this despairing roar.
Then, gradually, awkwardly, they completely died down.
The cheering crowd fell silent; they looked at each other with complex gazes mixed with sympathy, sadness, and confusion, watching the person curled on the ground, completely broken.
Those who had lost loved ones were not few; besides Hermione, many students were not among those cheering.
They had won the war.
But she had lost her entire world.
No one knew how much time had passed; perhaps it was a century.
Hermione finally moved.
With an almost puppet-like stiffness, she slowly stood up from the ground under the deathly silent gaze of everyone.
There were no tear tracks on her face, and those brown eyes that once sparkled with wisdom and vitality.
Now they were like two bottomless pools of frozen stagnant water, without any luster, yet in their deepest depths, a flicker of black flame that could incinerate everything was hidden.
Her hand gripping the bell was so tight that her knuckles were white.
She turned around, no longer looking at anyone, and walked straight out of the Great Hall.
Her joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness seemed to have vanished forever into that pure white light along with that silver-white figure.
Finally, she returned to Gryffindor Tower, back to the empty Girls Dormitory.
Everything in the room remained as it had been last night.
On the bed, the red ribbon that Lia had snapped was still hanging lonely on the bedpost, like a mocking scar.
Beside the pillow, the glass jar filled with Dried Fish was full, sparkling crystal clear in the morning sunlight.
Hermione walked to the bed and slowly sat down.
Finally, she slowly, bit by bit, opened her tightly clenched hand.
In her palm, the scorched bell lay quietly.
That warmth and that heartbeat had long since disappeared; now it was cold and dead, as if everything before had truly been just a hallucination born of her being on the verge of collapse.
Hermione stared at it fixedly, a black storm of fear and hope churning in her eyes.
She reached out her other hand, gently stroking the snapped half of the red ribbon, then picked up the glass jar and opened the lid.
A familiar, salty, and savory smell of Dried Fish wafted aggressively toward her.
Hermione picked up a piece of Dried Fish, brought it to her lips, and took a small bite.
It was salty, hard, and had an unaccustomed fishy smell.
It wasn't delicious at all.
Tears finally, at this moment, without any warning, burst forth.
This time, it wasn't a despairing wail.
But a silent wail as she stood in the endless darkness, holding the last faint spark of fire, setting out alone on a long journey.
She would wait... wait for her bed to grow back a unique cat that belonged only to her.
[Babes, I'm guilty! I actually missed a day of posting, I deserve to die!]
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