Ron was dead.
Hermione concluded finally as she bent over him, her scrapped knees quivering in fear and sorrow. Her face was pale and drawn, bushy brown hair tangled and sweat soaked, as it hung around her like a dark veil. Her Hogwarts Graduation robes were torn in various places and clung to her in shreds, a long gash at her shoulder spilling deep red blood across the black sleeve that hung loosely on her left arm, wand hanging uselessly in cold shivering fingers.
She was past tears. The pain and death that quivered and shifted in the magic charged air, was too thick and pressing to allow for the small relief of tears. The intense sufferings that had occurred that night were almost beyond belief, Hermione found herself in a daze, too shocked to fully comprehend what had taken place. But one thing was for certain, her best friend, Ronald Weasly, was lying unmoving before her.
With a strangled cry that was half sob half scream, Hermione threw herself down beside Ron's broken, deformed body. She shivered with a deep coursing hate and trembled with sadness, afraid to touch the familiar body before her, unable to believe that someone so close to her was really gone.
He hadn't died bravely or nobly as he deserved. One of the dark robed figures had lift his arm slowly as Ron struggled for breath, the fire clogging his lungs, and whispered the killing curse, taking Ron's life away in an instant. Ron's death had been short and cowardly, and in Hermione's eyes, a death that was unworthy of someone so good and kind.
She crawled over to him slowly, her head throbbing in pain as a bone weary ache sunk into her fear struck body. Please God, don't let him be dead, she prayed over and over again, though, deep down she knew that her prayers were in vain.
Ron's deep blue eyes were pale and shallow, the spark of bravery and mischief gone from their wide staring depths. He still wore the tattered remains of his silk black Graduation robes, the Gryffindor crest sown to his left breast the charred remains of the Hogwarts shield just above it. The chest beneath was still, no sound came from between him blue chapped lips. There was no blood, no sign of pain or struggle, there was only emptiness. An emptiness that cut deeper than any curse or wound, for with that emptiness came one underlying truth.
Ron was dead.
And where was the great Harry Potter?
Hermione remembered screaming for him as a Death Eater descended on her, but he had not come to her aid, in fact she had not seen Harry since he'd smiled at her from across the large room as they announced that years Valedictorian, which she vaguely remembered being herself.
Why hadn't Harry saved Ron?
Why wasn't he here now to help her?
Where was the Boy-Who-Lived, when the world need him most?
Hermione turned away from the lifeless form of her best friend bitterly, and looked around at the emptiness that used to be her home, her school, her life.
Hogwarts was as charred and dead as Ron. The high enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was gone and open to revel the real night sky, which was black and star less. Huge bricks and mounds of stone littered the once bright floors of the Great Hall, and over turned tables and chairs lay strewn everywhere. Shattered plates and goblets glittered in the patches of fire that still burned their way relentlessly through the broken school. The Hogwarts flag still burned in the distance, resting where the high table had once sat upon the dais, and the house banners were either ripped or gone.
Dead bodies lay littered all around Hermione like the fragile dead leaves of autumn. She could see the faces of her peers, classmates and friends, all dead and empty, statue like and so different from the broad smiling faces they had been only an hour before.
Above it all hung a glowing skull, a sick green snake winding its way through the white open mouth of the chilling mark.
Confronted by the horrid decay and doom around her Hermione did the only thing she could think of.
She ran.