3 May 1998, 6:11 am
Nearly 24 hours since the Second Blood War had ended. And she had no idea where her best friend and constant companion was. Anxiety gripped her—while the prophecy had been in effect, no one but the Dark Lord could have killed Harry. But once he had done the job, had some other straggling Death Eater found him? Or had Harry simply disappeared under his father's invisibility cloak—Death's own invisibility cloak, she corrected herself—and was somewhere in the castle, moping, or coping with his own trauma?
Hermione Granger was a superwoman when it came to intellect, but her kryptonite was unanswered questions. And these questions began eating at her.
She checked her beaded bag for the Marauder's Map, but remembered Harry had had it on him during the Battle of Hogwarts. She quickly started making a mental list of locations to look for him—boys' dorm, Room of Requirement—but gave it up almost immediately as a bad job. If Harry didn't want to be found, there was no way to find him without a full search party including ghosts and elves going room by room through the gigantic castle and calling out his name, only able to hope he would respond.
The other thing that was eating Hermione up was the missing day of her life. The last thing she remembered was the previous morning, when Harry briefed her and Ron about everything that had happened since Voldemort had called a ceasefire and asked for Harry to present himself before him—Snape's memories, the realisation that he was the last horcrux and needed to die in order for Voldemort to be killed, taking another killing curse, the conversation with Dumbledore at an all-white King's Cross, returning to life, Narcissa Malfoy's betrayal of the Dark Lord, the final battle, right up to the moment where Harry had finally dispatched the abomination known as Tom Marvolo Riddle to Death's door.
All those years ago, she had been right about his 'saving people' thing. Preventing her own brutal murder at the hands of the troll in their first year had only been the test case. And now, the git had gone and got himself killed, though it turned out to be the horcrux in his scar that died. A horcrux he had carried on his forehead for 16 and a half years. His story made her realise Dumbledore had arranged it in such a way that Harry had to sacrifice himself, with little-to-no odds of survival. She had wanted to rail at Harry for getting himself killed without so much as a by-your-leave to herself and Ron. But for once, deferred to the situation and held her tongue.